No More Domain Tasting

Domain tasting is NO MOE! YES!

I have always wondered why ICANN allowed this "try before you buy" policy in the first place.

What is domain tasting you ask? It is the process of registering (temporarily) a domain to determine it's "financial viability". Basically, you monetize the heck of it to see how well it does. If the domain didn't pass the test, the owner had a 5 day grace period in which he could get a refund. The ones that do good, are retained by the registrant.

Now, you all have seen these "financial viability test sites" pop up in searches. You are searching for your favorite whatever and perhaps you misspell the word or maybe you don't. Either way, included in your results page is a link to a page that has absolutely nothing to do what what you are looking for except that it may have your keyword on there as a link to something else.

Wikipedia states, "In April 2006, out of 35 million registrations, only a little more than 2 million were permanent or actually purchased. By February 2007, the CEO of GoDaddy reported that of 55.1 million domain names registered, 51.5 million were canceled and refunded just before the 5 day grace period expired and only 3.6 million domain names were actually kept."

According to ICANN, this whole process was initially designed to help people out who made a typo in the registration of their domain. Of course, as you can tell from the above numbers, people soon began to exploit this clause of generosity.

DotSauce.com reports that a unanimous vote of 13-0 turned the once flexible rule into a thing of the past.

"The discussion was sparked in response to the scandalous practice of Network Solutions hijacking domain searches in recent weeks. Oddly enough, the industry can be thankful to Net Sol for getting the snowball rolling on the end of domain tasting."

So what does this mean for regular Joe Surfer? Better quality results? I hope so but we will have to wait and see. One thing is for sure, there may be glut of "bad tasting" domain names that will soon come up for sale on the secondary market. And I bet that it will dramatically cut down on the amount of "typo squatting." (FYI - That anchor text is going to www.budwiser.com, an obvious typo.)

 

Why Did I Get Hacked?

I didn't get hacked, I was just posing that as a hypothetical.

Most of you are familiar with the story behind David Airey's domain/site hijacking. To recap, some enterprising individual hacked his way into David's Gmail account through some exploit and proceeded to transfer away his domain and then hold it hostage. Thanks to the intervention of Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy, David was able to get his domain back from the offending party.

With that groundwork laid, what are you to do to protect your domain? Making sure your little piece of the web is safe is something that most of us take for granted. I know I sure do. Even as I sit here and look at this list of things to do, I am realizing that I am doing a few things that you are NOT supposed to be doing.

James Koole over at the TuCows blog has a list of things that you may want to pay attention to.

1. "Use WHOIS Privacy. It can protect you to a certain extent from this kind of theft. If the administrative email address that is listed with the domain name under WHOIS is exposed, then a potential domain thief has two pieces of information he needs – the domain name, and the email address used to manage it. The thief can then gain control of the email address, and then use that email address to gain control of the domain by having passwords emailed to himself. WHOIS Privacy offers some protection because it prevents the domain thief from finding out what the administrative email address is for the domain name.

2. If you can avoid it, don’t use free, web-based email addresses for your administrative contact. In this case, a security flaw in GMail allowed the hacker to gain control of the email account of the domain holder. Likewise, having your entire domain portfolio under a single administrative email account is another mistake. Never mind having one domain name stolen, if a thief gains control of your email account, he could steal your entire portfolio of names.

3. Your domain name is worth more to you than you might think. It may only cost you $10 a year to register the domain, but take a moment to imagine what the cost would be if you had to change domain names tomorrow. It could be as easy as reprinting business cards, or as difficult as re-branding your entire company.

4. Chose your Registrar wisely. Look for a Registrar with a solid Compliance team and a good record within the industry. They’ll have policy and procedures in place to protect you against domain name theft, and in the event your domain is taken from you fraudulently, you stand a better chance of getting it back with a solid registrar. Our CEO, Elliot Noss, has talked about this in the past. You can read his “Ten questions to ask before you pick your domain name Registrar” post for more information on how to make an informed choice."

I guess I have some work to do after reading this. It really doesn't matter what you do or how secure you think you are, there is always someone that is going to find a way into your stuff. But question is, what makes certain people a target? Traffic? Perceived worth? Did they anger someone? Or is it the thrill of randomly picking someone and hacking them just to see if you can do it? AND exactly how many licks DOES it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll brand Tootsie Pop? The world may never know.

 

Another "Sometimes on Saturday" Post

Domain Name News just posted an interesting bit of history on their site. The post, called "The first 100 Domain Names on the Internet, lists the first 100 domain names ever registered. Dating back to March 15th of 1985, the list contains some companies that were obviously thinking ahead. Missing from the list are some names that have recently sold for millions. In a June post, I reported on a domain name that sold for $9.5 million and another one that sold for $12 million.

It's actually pretty amazing to see what is NOT on the list. But then again, domain name speculation wasn't a concept back in the mid 80's. Listed below are the first 30 names from the list and the dates when they were registered.

1. 15-Mar-1985 SYMBOLICS.COM
2. 24-Apr-1985 BBN.COM
3. 24-May-1985 THINK.COM
4. 11-Jul-1985 MCC.COM
5. 30-Sep-1985 DEC.COM
6. 07-Nov-1985 NORTHROP.COM
7. 09-Jan-1986 XEROX.COM
8. 17-Jan-1986 SRI.COM
9. 03-Mar-1986 HP.COM
10. 05-Mar-1986 BELLCORE.COM
11. 19-Mar-1986 IBM.COM
12. 19-Mar-1986 SUN.COM
13. 25-Mar-1986 INTEL.COM
14. 25-Mar-1986 TI.COM
15. 25-Apr-1986 ATT.COM
16. 08-May-1986 GMR.COM
17. 08-May-1986 TEK.COM
18. 10-Jul-1986 FMC.COM
19. 10-Jul-1986 UB.COM
20. 05-Aug-1986 BELL-ATL.COM
21. 05-Aug-1986 GE.COM
22. 05-Aug-1986 GREBYN.COM
23. 05-Aug-1986 ISC.COM
24. 05-Aug-1986 NSC.COM
25. 05-Aug-1986 STARGATE.COM
26. 02-Sep-1986 BOEING.COM
27. 18-Sep-1986 ITCORP.COM
28. 29-Sep-1986 SIEMENS.COM
29. 18-Oct-1986 PYRAMID.COM
30. 27-Oct-1986 ALPHACDC.COM

 

Domain Name Auction Report.

In case you were wondering, there actually is a domain name auction that is held in New York and other places around the country. Here are some of the names and what they sold for at the Recent auction in New York.

VintageAirplanes.com $5,700
Toy.net $26,000
StockTrades.com $25,000
BondFund.com $12,000
IrishWhiskey.com $8,000
PrivateTutors.com $16,000
PrivatePilots.com $20,000
Historian.com $25,000
TechnologyFund $10,000
PinkRoses.com $10,000
VintageMotorcycles.com $14,000
Booksellers.com $25,000
Houses.net $75,000
tightrope.com $18,000
EgyptianPyramids.com $75,000
clap.com $21,000