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Help! Somebody Stole My Domain Name!


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I'd call support but I'm running late for work due to this so this is the best I can do until I come back home from work in eight hours. :)

 

I thought I owned torn-wings.net. I haven't gotten a renewal in the mail lately, and also, I've been a little fried from my day job. One of my hostees emailed me this morning and said it was now parked by godaddy.com. Torn-Wings is ALSO the main access for my reseller account. I don't resell, I just have a lot of domains.

 

I want my domain back. WHOIS lookup said a bunch of stuff I don't understand. It's not in the TCH Domain Register thingy either. I'm so confused. Did I get hacked? What the hell happened?

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From the look of what happened,

 

Your domain name expired in April and, because you didn't renew it, someone else has purchased it.

 

Unfortunately they have almost certainly purchased it so that you will pay them a chunk of money to get it back.

 

The choices become;

 

1. Just change the domain name associated with your reseller (but set it to auto-renew this time, and make sure you keep your contact details uptodate).

2. Pay the person who bought it

3. Complain to arbitration about it. - The individual concerned does have a past record - http://www.arb-forum.com/domains/decisions/669202.htm

 

Personally - I'd go for option 1.

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From the look of what happened,

 

Your domain name expired in April and, because you didn't renew it, someone else has purchased it.

 

Unfortunately they have almost certainly purchased it so that you will pay them a chunk of money to get it back.

 

The choices become;

 

1. Just change the domain name associated with your reseller (but set it to auto-renew this time, and make sure you keep your contact details uptodate).

2. Pay the person who bought it

3. Complain to arbitration about it. - The individual concerned does have a past record - http://www.arb-forum.com/domains/decisions/669202.htm

 

Personally - I'd go for option 1.

 

I'm going to try option 3 and and in the mean while have Support do their thing and switch the domains. My contact information was current, I manage all my domains from the TCH Domain Registrant so since I bought a domain recently I thought it would have told me. I thought it was odd. But thanks for the advice! I'll update this thread as stuff changes (hopefully for good).

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Mish - I had the same thing happen to my primary reseller domain within the past few months, and unfortunately I wasn't able to get my domain back. Hopefully you'll be able to though!! :)

 

Unfortunately I can't get it back, but thanks for the thought. :) I never got my renewal notices because the TCH registrant had an old bouncing email I was unable to check (not their fault, it was the ONLY place I hadn't updated!). Needless to say that is fixed now. I would have put the auto-renewal on but I really don't like doing that because it can make my bank account bounce.

 

So I'm trying to think up a new domain. It was my 'hobby' domain too that I hosted a bunch of friends on.

 

According to GoDaddy though, it happened legally, within a DAY of my grace period ending. That tells me they were WATCHING me.

 

Sigh.

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According to GoDaddy though, it happened legally, within a DAY of my grace period ending. That tells me they were WATCHING me.

 

Not unusual. It's not to hard to get a list of domains about to expire.

 

Several of my domain names I let expire on purpose are now held by domain squatters trying to sell them (probably for much more than they are worth since none of them have sold).

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I thought about just getting a different ending like .org, but I figured I might was well get a new domain. I have to admit, the new name has grown on me: http://www.forsaken-angel.net/ Just updated my old layout and I'm all set to go. :)

 

MikeJ - I noticed there was something in my registrant (which is TCH) where for $10 a year, I can "monitor" the status of up to 200 domains. I figure that is how the squatter snagged me. Oh well, let 'em waste their money. :)

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MikeJ - I noticed there was something in my registrant (which is TCH) where for $10 a year, I can "monitor" the status of up to 200 domains. I figure that is how the squatter snagged me. Oh well, let 'em waste their money. :)

 

 

The person that snagged your domain was not using a simple monitoring service. These people have made a living doing this and 99% of them use their own custom scripts. Here is a copy of a recent article I read in the magazine Business 2.0. It gives you a good look into how they accomplish this and why they do it.

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