know anything about domibot.com - whois spying
 

I was buying a series of names a few days ago and missed 1. I only used 1 domain registrar to search for the domains and all were available because these names are obscure.

So i go to register the name and it was baught today by domibot.com which I hold suspect because it uses an automated process. Taken from the site "Domibot registers expiring and previously registered domains using an automated process. No humans are involved in selecting domains"
The name to the best of my knowledge was never previously owned and i cant see who would want it anyway.

How can they do this?

thanks, hopefully these idiots will drop the name.

I have read no less than 20 posts in the past week here at GFY about this...

Had I not read so many I'd feel sorry for you...

Bob Parsons from GoDaddy writes about this:
http://www.bobparsons.com/article.php?id=116

dunno maybe packet sniffing?

"The scheme exploded in just a single year.
Things changed drastically in just one year. During March 2006, a whopping 29,894,290 .COM names were registered. Of these, 92.5% or 27,660,668 were dropped just a moment before the grace period expired ? again more than 99% were part of the add/drop scheme"


Talk about scandal and fraud. I wonder what verisign is doing about this since all new domains get queried through them to begin with.

Thanks for the article. He didn't comment on the whois 'spying'. :disgust

Wow, what a nice little scam they have going there.

buy the domain when you search for it :)

I've not been caught out by this as yet - but it seems to be occurring more and more often these days...

DirectNIC is involved in this too. Maybe they can shed some light on it from a perspective other than Bob Parsons.

In what way is directnic involved in this? I use them once in a while

I just called the company i used. they are there own registrar and dont know how it happened. They also dont sell or give info to anyone.

Check http://www.dailychanges.com/

Drop down to "Top 35 most active Name Servers on 4/25/2006 with NEW domains" and you'll see that DIRECTNIC.COM is #2. They or one of their customers are registering/deleting over 300,000 names per day, domain tasting. Just behind MY-NAME-SERVER.COM who is registering/deleting over 1 million daily.

The lesson: the second you searched the domain and is free, register it...

Egomancer

Thats good advice. Those who snooze usually do lose.

Interesting

http://www.nameintelligence.com :2 cents:

So you finally believe? If I recall correctly...you called my story out as bullshit about a month or so ago.

can't you just wait 5 days then buy it? or do they add/drop it again?

never heard of this, thanks for the link

.

This is the way it works.

They have a 5 day Free grace period to decide if they want to keep the domain name. The name costs them very little (seems less then $1 to me) to buy so if the name makes more then this on the landing page they keep it. Also if the name gets searched more they also keep it.

The companies doing this also get free money from these landing page clicks if they dont keep the domain.

I called icann they said to email them. I also called verisign but there domain dept was sold to network solutions.

This will become a major issue for everyone if its not stopped.

fuck, Directnis is down and I've 2 domains I've to renew tomorrow :disgust