Re: FN-FORUM: doman registration

date posted 10th May 2006 16:37

On 9 May 2006, at 18:47, James McIlroy wrote:

> Its simple really don't use dodgy looking sites, and no-one will =20
> ever steal
> your domain(s) - (unless you forget to re-register it)

You must be pretty new to the game to not know that there are some =20
very large and reputable companies that used to be in the domain =20
stealing business.

Ever heard of Fasthosts? They used to do it.

Ever heard of 123-reg? They used to do it.

Ever heard of Directnic? It is widely alleged they're doing this =20
right now, and there are even rumours of collusion on intercepting =20
whois lookups that query the central whois servers...

I'm pretty sure 1&1 used to do it a few years back too - I've =20
definitely heard anecdotal evidence of it, but never seen it myself.

The point is, if you go to a registrar to check a domain, you can =20
expect that somebody will look at that log a few hours later and may =20
choose to grab it if they think they can make money on the resale =20
market - a market which I can assure you is growing (one of my mates =20
did =A316k in sales last year off it, just on .co.uk domains) - and if =20=

you absolutely, 100% certainly want to make sure you get 48 hours to =20
sleep on the idea of a domain purchase, check it using a site that is =20=

known to be relatively trusted like:

http://www.internic.net/whois.html

Or for any two-letter CCTLD like .uk, you can always go to =20
www.nic.CCTLD - e.g. www.nic.uk, www.nic.ch, www.nic.fr, etc. and =20
there is nearly always an accurate whois lookup tool provided.

Or, just switch to a real OS and be able to run 'whois ...' on the =20
command-line. :-)

--
Paul Robinson=