For Sale Enom catching .info (for whom??)

[carlton]

One gray area (or registrar trick) is when a registrar catches a name and immediately auctions the name off... thus the registrar remains just an intermediary (this is OK) overseeing a transaction in which the dropped domain goes to an actual paying customer. However, many things go wrong with auctions at the dishonest registrars ... who manipulate the auction behind the scenes.

I have proof of auction winners not being awarded domains and the domain consequently remaining registered to the registrar ... indefinitely (= warehousing). They create the illusion of a "fair process" by holding an auction ... which they then sabotage so that the dropping domain ultimately comes back to them. But, the subject of this thread is about even worse violations such as registrars outright grabbing names for themselves in direct contradiction to the ICANN policy statement posted above.

Remember the .EU fiasco with several hundred fake registrars all created to capture high quality .eu's? Point being that some registrars have shown again and again they will engage in abuses if no one is willing to challenge them. So people utilize various registrars (investing considerable time) to catch dropping names with the reasonable expectation that they are participating in a fair process. This "fair process" being manipulated and exploited by dishonest registrars sneaking in the back door while domainers attempt to obtain dropping names at other fair and reputable registration companies (but with little success).

 

[Estrange]

I did a bit search;


Domain Name: commercial.info

Registrar: Alfena LLC (R388-LRMS)

Expiration Date: 2007-09-21 09:36:20
Creation Date: 2006-09-21 09:36:20
Last Update Date: 2006-09-21 09:39:58

Name Servers:
ns1.fastpark.net
ns2.fastpark.net

Extended Information - :
Preview by Thumbshots.com
IP Address: 216.8.177.28
IP Location: Canada
Website Status: active
Server Type: Apache/2.0.54 (Debian GNU/Linux) DAV/2 PHP/4.3.10-16 mod_ssl/2.0.54 OpenSSL/0.9.7e
Cache Date: 2006-09-22 17:57:11 MST
Compare Archived Data: 2006-08-24new!

Registrant Contact Information:
Name: PocketDomain.com
Address 1: 2141 Wisconsin Ave. Suite C-2
City: Washington
State: DC
Zip: 20007
Country: US
etc. etc...

Details of Alfena is;
Alfena, LLC
2141 Wisconsin Avenue, NW Suite C2
Washington,DC 20007
United States
1-202-625-7000
[email protected]

Right; on the same address I've found another Registrar with the same Phone no...

Yenkos, LLC
2141 Wisconsin Avenue, NW Suite C2
Washington,DC 20007
United States
1-202-625-7000
[email protected]

and another one;

Ignitela,LLC
2141 Wisconsin Avenue, NW
Suite C2
Washington,DC 20007
United States
1-202-625-7000
[email protected]

and another one;

Searchnresq, Inc.
15801 NE 24th Street, Bellevue, WA 98008
United States
1-425-274-4500
[email protected]

Ok, another interesting data.. we all know Greenberg & Lieberman Lawyer Company don't we? ok please look at the phone no and address...

Domain name: ibsmedications.com
Registrant Contact:
Christoph’s Singing Real Estate Group, Inc.
Christopher Wallace ([email protected])
202.625.7000
Fax: none
800 SIlver Spring Ave.
Silver Spring, MD 20910
US

Administrative Contact:
Greenberg & Lieberman
Stevan Lieberman ([email protected])
+1.2026257000
Fax:
2141 Wisconsin Avenue Suite C-2
Washington, DC 20007
US

Guess who is the registrar of all domain names that you can see on this post? Enom...

There're more companies which are related with enom or owned by enom...

My Question is; why does Enom has owned these registrars? What's the purpose of having that much of Registrars? I bet there are more of them there?
And my conspiracy theory is; that lawyer company works for Enom...
Euroka! :whoo:

 

[msl]

Xcellent research estrange :cheeky:

you are showing, to the everyday DN newbie or excited start up DN investor JUST why the industry is getting stinky everyday.....:fencing:

we had been tracking a very valuable domain (another thread on DNF) which we knew NOBODY had any ideas about.... no whois checks, no lookups, no nothing..... amazingly 2 mins before we were going to liquidate the company.... a phantom LLC company start up came along and bought the debts of the company and the DN's :censored: .... guess what.... after spending a week hunting them out.... the company is a branch of another company owned by family members of a BIG Tag holder!!!!

it is just not on and the T&C are being broken so they should be issued with fines..... TODAY!!!

we are currently waiting for a real biggy at the end of Oct so it will be interesting if the same happens again.....

we feel a "NAME AND SHAME" thead coming on monday! WTS!

 

[katherine]

Just on a side note Buydomains also has a listed address on Wisconsin Avenue:

RareNames, WebReg
4200 Wisconsin Ave NW
Washington, DC 20016-2143
US

I guess all these people are using accommodation addresses :-/

 

[carlton]

... and another one;

Searchnresq, Inc.
15801 NE 24th Street, Bellevue, WA 98008
United States
1-425-274-4500
[email protected]

"15801 NE 24th Street, Bellevue, WA 98008" is also the actual physical address of enom's office.

ICANN need to make a very public statement about ...

3.7.9 Registrar shall abide by any ICANN adopted specifications or policies prohibiting or restricting warehousing of or speculation in domain names by registrars.

Until ICANN express publicly that warehousing must stop, then the offending registrars will just keep siphoning off the best names. Another prominent .info city is dropping tomorrow. I bet I know which registrar gets it.

Ironic that enom don't offer .info drop catch to the general public. And that "Alfena LLC" (accredited by ICANN) don't even have a website for the general public to use.

 

[Estrange]

"15801 NE 24th Street, Bellevue, WA 98008" is also the actual physical address of enom's office.

Yes, that's true. It seems so clear that; Enom acquiring all valuable .info domain names and hiding its official company name by using made up, purpose built, fake registrars.
It they'd auction them after they catch these names, I'd have no words at all. But it seems like they're keeping it. This is wrong!
This is like; when a company does some promotions or competitions, member of this company and families of these members can't attend these promotions or comptitions and benefit from the prize.
That's what they do, I believe.
I couldn't find so obvious relationship between these small registrars and Enom yet.
But this is getting crazy and so unfair. If this type of action acknowleged by the other big registrars, then this will kill the dn market. There is no meaning of spending time to acquire domains. Can we compete them as individuals? No.
I advise we should take an action. If somebody knows what legal procedure that we can follow to stop this action or if somebody comes with more clues about enom's action that'd help us to do something about it.

 

[WhoWhere]

PocketDomain.com, proud new owners of:

Sarasota.info
Promo.info

 

[WhoWhere]

For those who know what I'm talking about: do you think it's a coincidence that DomainCatcher changed from being an important player to a useless service almost overnight, at the about the same moment PocketDomain stepped it?

 

[Estrange]

rif.info -->Pocketdomains 09/17
umj.info -->Alfena 09/22
bst.info -->Alfena 09/22
aiv.info -->Pocketdomains 09/22
promo.info --> Guess who is the registrar? Yenkos, what a coinsedance wohooo!
Gosh, I'm really tired, and p***ed off
When you get deeper of this mess, there're dozens of incorporated registrars, websites of enom. It seems like they're working so hard, well done to them...

 

[col]

santacruz.info -->Alfena LLC
lite.info -->Ignitela LLC
positive.info -->PocketDomain.com
request.info -->Alfena LLC
commercial.info -->Alfena LLC
modelle.info -->Alfena LLC

 

[carlton]

PocketDomain.com, proud new owners of:

Sarasota.info

Yep, that's the one I was watching and a backorder request had been placed with every other registrar for Sarasota.info. Enom apparently have a drop script tweaked to perfection and are consistently beating out the other registrars. This thread is becoming a good reference list of the valuable names that are disappearing.

 

[beatz]

3.7.9 Registrar shall abide by any ICANN adopted specifications or policies prohibiting or restricting warehousing of or speculation in domain names by registrars.

Unfortunately ICANN has not "adopted" any strict specifications or policies in that regard, so if there is no policy restricting warehousing then there is no such a policy that registrars have to abide by.

The whole paragraph basically says:

"Should we ever adopt a warehousing restriction policy, you as the registrar have to abide."

What it actually means:

"Don't worry - we won't ever adopt such a policy".

So i think unless ICANN adds a new policy regarding warehousing by registrars, what these registrars are doing might even be in perfect compliance with ICANN rules.

That's what's so sick about this whole issue.

 

[Dave Zan]

Found this info in another forum in case it might help in some way:

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/index.html

OFFICIALS TO CONTACT

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

Carlos M. Gutierrez
U.S. Secretary of Commerce

Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez
Office of the Secretary
Room 5516
U.S. Department of Commerce
14th & Constitution Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20230

Phone: 202-482-2000
Email: CGutierrez AT doc.gov

NATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS & INFORMATION ASSOCIATION

John M. R. Kneuer
Acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information

Herbert C. Hoover Building (HCHB)
U.S. Department of Commerce / NTIA
1401 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20230

NTIA/ITS
U.S. Department of Commerce
325 Broadway
Boulder, Colorado 80305-3328

Office of the Assistant Secretary
Phone: (202) 482-1830
FAX: (202) 501-0536
Email: jkneuer AT ntia.doc.gov

It looks like ICANN needs a shove rather than a push since they're the ones in
"authority" to do something about this. If they won't, then somebody else had
better step in.

However, do be ready to provide specifics (e.g. warehousing, stockpiling, etc.)
that are "reasonably" enforceable. After all, a registrar can always setup an
off-shore company and still use their registrar credentials to do what they want
to do.

 

[NameYourself]

To anyone interested in the governance of ICANN, below is a link to the recent U.S. Senate hearing regarding "The Future of ICANN". GoDaddy was present and raised some issues regarding accountability. To sum things up, there will be an upcoming hearing again regarding the justification of the increase in .com pricing and how justified those increases were, as well as transparency and openness of how ICANN goes about making their deals and agreements with the registries and coming up with their policies.

Anyone seeing the recent catching and warehousing as a problem needs to find out when the next meeting is and include "warehousing" and "registrar conflicts of interest" as items to bring up. Does GoDaddy warehouse? If not, I believe they will be present during the next meeting, and hopefully they would be able to bring that issue up too, if someone could pass those details along to them. Right now, that is pretty much the only place (Senate/Dept of Commerce) to get ICANN to take action.

Here's the link to the recent hearing, where the president of ICANN was put on the spot by GoDaddy.

rtsp://video.webcastcenter.com/srs_g2/commerce092006.rm (RealPlayer)

 

[carlton]

... Here's the link to the recent hearing, where the president of ICANN was put on the spot by GoDaddy.

rtsp://video.webcastcenter.com/srs_g2/commerce092006.rm (RealPlayer)

This was very enlightening and entertaining. Thanks for posting the link. I was shocked at the level of "closeness" that clearly exists between ICANN and Verisign. ICANN had better be careful as significant numbers are onto their behind the scenes deals.

Ken Silva (Chief Security Officer) of Verisign (.com monopoly) came across as defensive and ultra protective of Verisign's "special" status as Lord of the internet safeguarding the whole world form hackers, spammers, terrorists, and other potentially "devastating" evils. When asked to justify WHY Verisign want to increase yearly .com fees by as much as 7%, he had no legitimate explanation and seemed exposed when congressional reps brought up that .net REDUCED its yearly fees from $6.00 to $3.50 per year.

 

[StockDoctor]

So back on this info stuff. Pocketdomains tied to enom, tied to the old myspace spam guys, tied to the dotster guys, tied to the capitoldomains et al TM kiting guys, tied to chesterton whois spy guys, now set up a deal between dotster and myspace. I left out all the registrars they bot and tons of other bad stuff, but are these guys on a mission to take over domain land?

 

[NameYourself]

Stoc - Which registrar/s (if any) can we have any confidence in, in your opinion?

 

[StockDoctor]

Stoc - Which registrar/s (if any) can we have any confidence in, in your opinion?

Good question. It's very hard to find a registrar with a clean white hat nowadays. Too much money to be made ripping us off, and absolutely nobody to hold them to any rules, morals or integrity. Having had accounts at over 60 of them, I'm afraid to say that it's gonna take some work. Would be easier to say who is the least naughty.


For a kick, feel free to go to www.pocketdomain.com where you'll see the Enom site. If you have an enom account you can login to Pocketdomain and do just about whatever.

In talking to Enom, they say they do NOT own PocketDomain and that they are an independent registrar. Upon a request for clarification, Enom reseller support says they have a lot of credentials, but PocketDomain is NOT one of them. Further Enom claims that it is NOT catching infos for themselves or anyone else at this time.

 

[steven22]

OFFICIAL WORD FROM ICANN

Unfortunately, your interpretation below is not entirely accurate.


There have been no "ICANN adopted specifications" concerning warehousing, so even though the RAA allows for the possibility of future adoption of such policies, none have been adopted. This would have to take place through the policy development process of the GNSO.

To clarify:

Section 3.7.9 simply explains that registrars will abide by any such policy if adopted.

Section 4.2 states "New and revised specifications and policies may be established on the following topics:... 4.2.5 prohibitions on warehousing of or speculation in domain names by registries or registrars;"

So, as you see, this says "policies MAY be established". None have actually been established.

While I understand your concern about credibility, a correct reading of the contract language should clear this up. Certainly, if you believe warehousing is something that should be addressed by ICANN, then this would have to be done by interested parties through the policy development process. ICANN staff is here to implement adopted policy and we cannot also implement new policy until it has been adopted.

I hope this is helpful.

Regards,

Tim Cole

Chief Registrar Liaison

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

 

[dvdrip]

I don't think it's enom catching these domains.
Why would they use namedrive?
But what do I know...