A Domain Name Gets Swiped

PLEASE READ THIS NEWER POST FIRST (LINK)

The title of this discussion was formerly "GoDaddy Swipes a Domain Name," but it's fair to note that it has not been proven that GoDaddy.com has done anything wrong. So, the title of the post has been changed.

This morning, Paul spotted this bit of news within a Slashdot thread discussing the launch of the Perens open source domain parking service.

As the user GoatMonkey2112 (no relation) points out, he performed a little test of his own design at GoDaddy.com. He went to the domain registrar's site, found an available domain name, added it to his cart, and then cancelled his shopping cart. He returned the next day to find the domain name parked, and thus available only by paying an inflated fee.

Disreputable hosting providers are nothing new. Some people have reported having their domains swiped within minutes of searching at other registrars. However, GoDaddy is one of the larger domain name registrars, offering multiple hosting packages and maintaining a high-visibility television advertising campaign.

If GoatMonkey2112's story is true, then GoDaddy is yet another company to put on your "sneaky business practices" list.

UPDATE: An InterNIC whois query tells us that GoatMonkey2112's turbocow.com domain name was parked by in2Net.com, a Canadian registrar that also owns and operates the cheap hosting site Dollarhost.com. So, one of two things is happening here. First, this could just be a coincidence and GoatMonkey2112 is one unlucky broheem. The other possibility is that the registrars are sharing their domain name query information and parking unclaimed domains that people have shown interest in purchasing... If anyone has any investigative findings, please post them in the comments below so we can get to the bottom of this.

UPDATE 2: OK, looks like we have an answer to what's happening here. Monkey Bites reader shaggysurfs writes in:

One of the things everyone should know is that when you submit a query for ANY domain name, it is sent out across the interenet to ALL the registrars and registries. That means everyone knows that it is a potential quality TLD. The reason they send the query out is due the amount of expired and waiting to be deleted domains. Registrars want to get you the domain that you ask for, so they query everyone to see if it is available.

There are many companies out there (registrars and private business) that search this info out. I have done business with the majority of registrars and I have found GoDaddy to be one of the honest ones out there.

Trust me, there are a lot of scumbag companies. I have worked for a lot of these companies also and seen the practices that they have. This has been going on for years and may be hard to stop.

So it's not necessarily a question of one company's sneaky practices, but in fact, an entire sector of the industry taking advantage of the freedom of such information. No matter who you're asking about a domain's availability, other people are listening. Word to the wise.

Thanks to shaggysurfs for clearing this up! And GoDaddy, consider yourselves vouched for.