Is someone monitoring my domain searches?

[Ian]

true, I agree with your intuitive ideas but how would you enforce this upon registrars. In my opinion the success of such a policy can only be guranteed if only it originates from a powerful over arching body like ICANN which I am inclined to think would not be willing to get dragged into it anytime soon!!!

[Mr.Domains]

Help me out guys, i'm scared to search for names now!!!

If in doubt, I have my own domain tools site with my own scripts for doing Bulk Alailability, Whois, Ovt Checks, PageRank etc. I won't post the URL because it's self promotion, but if anyone wants to use my tools I can PM it to them. And you have my word there is no search logging or spyware of any kind included!

[DomainAcrobat]

all I can say is 30,000,000 new names a month are registered. If you dont buyem fast someone else will.

[amcdonald]

Scary thought, hopefully where i search is ok!

[Dave Zan]

A registrar's CEO confirmed at least one web-based site that's "clean":

www.iwhois.com

I use this myself since it shows both registrar and registry data, especially for
.com. So far so good, none of the available names I've seen are taken soon
after.

[tipsfromthetop]

Adding noise to a whois lookup is a very good idea... Wouldnt having a whois search behind a encryption do the same job? like you do when you enter credit card details on a site? If so then maybe this is the way forward.

[ColdGin]

I use whois.sc they have a great service, someone here heard something about them?

[GodBlessYou]

Sounds simple. To the thread start, whois and see who caught your domains. If the whois matches, bingo, stop whoising on those registrars.

[DaddyHalbucks]

There could be a trojan on your PC.

It is probably NOT the registrar's fault.

[Imprimatur]

Threads like this only reinforce my paranoia

[Dale Hubbard]

I did post a safe way to do this earlier in the thread.

[March2005]

https://support.domaintools.com/inde...id=8&nav=0,4,5

[MrDude]

Or
Type in the domain, if its available add it to your cart and checkout asap.

[dwrunyon]

poof

[Avensen]

Another story: "Whois Hijacking My Domain Research?":
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1991365,00.asp

[Avensen]

Even officials from GoDaddy acknowledge that WHOIS queries from their site are being monitored by someone at the higher level of the domain WHOIS system!

http://www.icann.org/meetings/marrak...dn-27jun06.htm

There's -- I'd now like to pass the microphone to Tim Ruiz from go daddy, who is the vice president of corporate development and policy planning for the Go Daddy group.
>>TIM RUIZ: Thank you, Jonathan.
As I stated earlier, godaddy does feel that using the add-grace period for domain-tasting is a problem.
That is an abuse.
There's been a lot of debate about the economics of that.
That's not our concern.
It's not our concern that somebody's getting something for free.
I think there are some legitimate questions that need to be asked in that regard.
But what our primary concern is, that it's creating customer confusion, that it's threatening consumer confidence in our industry, and that it's costing -- it's causing increased support costs for registrars, definitely for Go Daddy.
We've talked to other registrars just informally.
We'll let them speak for themselves.
But indications are that other registrars are beginning to see similar problems.
So the kinds of support issues that this is creating and the kind of confusion that this activity is creating I'll let registrars -- our customers speak for themselves by just sharing with you a few of the written complaints that we've received from customers.
This first one was directed to our CEO, Bob parsons.
And the customer says, hi, Bob, I've been doing business with you for many years.
On Friday, I checked the availability of something.com from your site as I always do.
It was available.
I had my meeting with the store owner and promised to buy the domain name for him today.
I ran the availability of it again this morning from your site and imagine my surprise when the domain showed as being unavailable and sold to some obscure registrar, and he names the registrar.
I do not believe this is coincidence.
I believe in my heart that you've got someone in your camp that's giving information to someone that's speculating on domain names.
I really hope that you -- you're the kind of person I've always assumed are you and this situation is one you take seriously.
Well, we did take it seriously.
We spent a lot of time investigating this situation, in fact, close to five days working with this customer.
Ultimately, we were able to get the domain name that they were afternoon because it was dropped after it had been tasted for five days.
Another comment, complaint, actually.
I've personally searched on several names which have absolutely no meaning whatsoever.
We assume no anybody else but himself.
All were stolen by some registrar and parsed out to their various subcompanies.
They eventually dropped within a few days.
Either someone internal to your company and/or someone who is in charge of the entire WHOIS system of queries and/or somewhere along the way some bot or worm is intercepting these queries.
Somehow, in some way, these queries are being intercepted and used to some registrars' benefit.
They know it, you know it, we all know it, ICANN knows it.
It's time to put the legal folks with the U.S. government on this.
This has gone too long and too far.
No resolution to the domain names that he was concerned about.
They all dropped, so I would assume that he was able to eventually acquire them.
And, finally, I used to be a proud go-daddy customer.
I registered and bought both a domain name and a Hosting space there.
Since I searched for my second domain acquisition in the WHOIS box at Godaddy's site, even after entering my customer I.D. and password five days ago, and tried to make it effective on Tuesday, it came that the dot com I queried and found available the previous Saturday was already registered, delegated, and active since the day after by, and it names some registrar.
I was registering my boss's company name.
He was trying to understand what all that was about.
He doesn't speak English, doesn't trade with credit cards, so had I to accomplish the task.
And he couldn't believe his trademark was registered.
Obvious questions: What, why, how?
What can we do?
Fortunately, in this case, we were able to help the customer get the domain name.
So these are the kinds of things that we're seeing on the rise.
We're not seeing, you know, hundreds of these on a daily basis.
We're seeing probably tens on a weekly basis, but much more than we've ever seen before and related to this activity in the add-grace period.
As this activity continues to grow, we suspect this type of issue is going to grow, this type of confusion is going to grow and our long-term concern is it's going to erode confidence in our industry and what we do for a business.
Those are our concerns.
We feel, you know, there's been some discussion about policy development processes to solve this.
For us, that would be an unfortunate step to have to take, not because we don't have confidence in the policy development process, but, quite honestly, it's resource-intensive, it's time-consuming, and we feel that the tools already exist to put an end to this activity in the add-grace period.
And, again, this isn't about a problem we have with monetization.
We don't feel if we stop this activity in the add-grace period it's going to solve all the problems we're talking about here today.
But it will solve, we believe, the problems that we're seeing right now with customers being confused and losing confidence in what we're doing.

[tricolorro]

https://support.domaintools.com/inde...id=8&nav=0,4,5

Hi,

This is part of the problem. Companies like DomainTools and most Registrars
don't believe Domain Spying is possible. They believe it is just coincidence.
And they are so wrong.

I remember reading of a woman who searched for a domain name for her business.

It was something very specific like SallysOptical.com.

The name was available.

Two days later when she went to register the name, it was gone.
And not regged by anyone named Sally or an Optician.

Fortunately,the domains usually become available again within or just after
5 days. But the problem is most non-domainers don't know that.

Happy Domaining
but beware the


because my feet are killing me today!

[tricolorro]

A registrar's CEO confirmed at least one web-based site that's "clean":

www.iwhois.com

I use this myself since it shows both registrar and registry data, especially for
.com. So far so good, none of the available names I've seen are taken soon
after.

Hey Dave,

The only drawback is you can only search one domain at a time.

Have some popcorn.

Happy Domaining
but beware the

Patrick

[centurion]

I'm having suspicions about domaintools, either them or my register . I doubt it's anyone there, someone probably is intercepting the searches. Not everything free I search for is regged of course, but if it has an ovt number it will usually get picked up a day latter ( and usually dropped). Too many domains are getting regged at the same time for it to be a coincidence . Being regged almost always by the same crew .

[Gerry]

I'll have to look and see if I can find it, but there was an article published regarding this very thing.

The author of the article used a website that was actually redirecting the information entered. To prove his point and make his case, he entered his full name. The result was it was available. Within a couple of minutes, he re-entered the exact same information and it had been registered.

There is no coincidence to this.

And I actually found a site doing this very thing the other night. There are not too many registrars or registration services that reg .us.com extensions. I am working on two projects that may require this. When I was exploring some optional wording (having entered the same letters in varying positions) all three times the domain name was available.

When I finally selected the domain, it was regged. As well as the second. As well as the third. This is not a coincidence.

It is my understanding that the redirected domain is registered and tested for traffic and usually dropped in a few days if there is no traffic.

I didn't think it would be such a topic on this forum but I immediately thought about the article I referenced at the beginning of my comments.

So, along with trying to find the article, I'll look back in my history and see if I can recover the bogus service and post it as a DO NOT USE example.