I don’t know who the Domain Sherpa is, but I know he is on to something with an article on people stealing domain ideas.
His article goes into great detail on how people can poach your domain name ideas. The basic process is that you go to a registrar, look for a name and they intercept your request. At this point they look at your request, compare it to their own, internal inventory, then either poach the domain if you don’t register it or let it go.
Fascinating.
Buying domains is a hobby of mine, though the wife would call it an addiction. I’ve long suspected that domain registrars do this, because I’ve had it happen to me.
Survive any disaster in your own home. Prepare now. A must for the coming problems in the world!There was once a BBS system called PCBoard. It was a great system that ran on multiple platforms and allow multitasking back in the DOS days. This meant you could run multiple lines on one machine. Anyway, back in the 90s I thought it would be cool to buy pcboard.com. I went to the registrar, confirmed it was available, but didn’t buy it. I came back the next hour and it was mysteriously not available.
I’ve long suspected there is something dirty going on in the domain world and now we know it is true.
What can you do to avoid this?
The Domain Sherpa recommends a number of things:
- Query the WhoIs server directly. His article lists how to do this on multiple operating systems.
- Do business with registrars that don’t do this. His article has direct responses from a few of them.
- Register your domain asap. Don’t give anyone a chance to steal it.
Funny that you have to take precautions to ensure your ideas aren’t stolen before they are firmly entrenched.
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