Soul.com - another Verisign scam !

[beatz]

Now here's the story:

2 days ago by chance i find out Soul.com is gonna drop and it has the "Local DB must be out of date" thingie already which means it's about to drop.So i call up NSI and try to find out if there is any way NSI can reg that name for me(you know they sometimes do that if you're talking nice to them) and talk to the support guy for like half an hour.He tells me VS last record for that name is from April this year and as the name is already about to drop there is not much he can do except a request to release this name which i reject.So, next morning what do i find out - the name has been registered by someone!

Now, that alone doesn't make a big story but here's the spice:

- It's again registered at NSI

- The whois is completely(!) faked

- Although it's VS obligation to provide true whois info,VS themselves have put in a placeholder-email addy

- If you use the VS whois to lookup the name, at the top there is a link to make an unsolicted offer for that name on GreatDomains which has been bought by VS.

- So i talk to a VS employee for 30 minutes and a few hours later its registered

- Type in soul.com : It redirects to Dotregistrar

All very strange - Even if it has been snapped by someone with a normal snapback(which i doubt) there is enough suspicious stuff left.Just the fake whois info alone is reason enough to sue VS

Here is the whois info:

"soul.com" is registered with whois.networksolutions.com:


Registrant:
Datafarm (DHIMFCNEPD)
162 P Massa Carr
Roma, Roma 0100
CA

Domain Name: SOUL.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Datafarm (FHUHPRHKSO) [email protected]
Datafarm
162 P Massa Carr
Roma, Roma 0100
CA
000-000-0000

Record expires on 05-Nov-2007.
Record created on 29-Oct-2002.
Database last updated on 30-Oct-2002 10:16:10 EST.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS1.DR-PARKINGSERVICES.COM 65.82.1.86
NS2.DR-PARKINGSERVICES.COM 65.82.1.87

Btw - There is no "Roma" in CA, there is no "162 P Massa Carr" in Rome, neither a Datafarm in Rome - no Datafarm in Roma,Texas either.Also note the "000-000-000" fake phonenumber and the (mispelled) "[email protected]" placeholder addy put in by VS themselves.

Funny thing is, another guy at VS i spoke with recommended that i should make a complaint atdomainmagistrate.com - cuz even to him personally it looked strange.

Uh

 

[Brujah]

A batch of one-word domain names that were never expiring, were fraudulently transferred to DotRegister earlier this summer. I believe in May and June mostly.

Recently.. some four+ months later.. many of the names (not all) have been returned to NSI.

This name wasn't really expired, nor was it really expiring soon. "Local DB must be out of date." means many different things.

Some of these records now have "[email protected]" while others have "[email protected]".

 

[beatz]

So ?!
If so, those names should have been made available to the public again - but it does seem that they didnt do that.
Bogus whois is bogus whois.

 

[Brujah]

Why should they be made available to the public ? They shouldn't have been transferred in the first place. Why shouldn't the domains go back to the owners whom they were stolen from in the first place ?

 

[beatz]

UH?
So if it were the original owners that have reregistered those names or to which those names have been transferred to, why the fake whois then?
And does anybody know the REAL story about the "stolen" part ?
Who were the original owners?
How were those domains stolen ?
Who stole them?

And how come noone at VS knows about that when talking to them?
Anyway, as you can see, the whois still shows fake whois.

 

[beatz]

UPDATE:
I filed a complaint at ICANN
I filed a complaint at ICANNwatch
I filed a complaint at Better Business Bureau

Then i talked to the executive department of Verisign - guess what:
They indeed gonna try to contact the "owners" that are listed in respective whois for Lotto.com and Soul.com to obtain correct whois data - if that don't work, VS is gonna release both names back to the public pool.
Thats not something i am guessing but what the executive guy at VS replied.
So it looks like the whole "stolen domains" thing and that these domains have never dropped but transferred back to the original owners is just not true but the opposite is.

 

[draqon]

Well, the "original owners" were just a random group of people. There wasnt anything that linked them together, except for the fact that they had various valuable domains at NSI.

I dont know if NSI knows who the thief is.

The domains were stolen because NSI makes it easy to steal names. Any domain with an invalid administrative email is a potential lure for thieves.

No, there is not any good reason to return these names to the public. What NSI should do is carefully look into their records and replace the fake data with the correct whois stuff. I suspect they no longer have all the whois info in their archives however.

 

[beatz]

Well if they dont manage to replace the fake data that alone is a good reason to return these names to the public.
But that's not something that has to be discussed - as i already said, Verisign WILL return them to the public should it be impossible to obtain valid whois info.

 

[clemzonguy]

VERISIGN BOUGHT GREAT DOMAINS???????? IS THIS TRUE????

Or was this simply a VS company to begin with. Isn't it about to go under anyways?

 

[beatz]

Yes.
GreatDomains.com was bought by Verisign.

 

[RacerX]

false Whois information, use the following form.


http://www.internic.net/cgi/rpt_whois/rpt.cgi

 

[HLK]

>>GreatDomains.com was bought by Verisign<<<

For 100 million dollars.

One of the biggest jokes in Net history...

 

[Beachie]

Beatz,

These domains (there were quite a number of them) were stolen using an exploit of DotRegisters' transfer authority system.

Some others:

estates.com
shoppers.com
lotto.com
sheriff.com
friendship.com
advice.com
odyssey.com
athlete.com
grapevine.com
golfclubs.com

Most of the owners received transfer requests, which they ignored, only to receive an email later saying that the transfer was successful. I'm guessing that the algorythm DR used to calculate the authority code was compromised (probably just a hash of domain name + user info + fixed password).

The original owners were just a random selection of people who owned valuable names.

I can guarantee they won't drop. Verisign will return them to the original owners, but I suspect the delay has been due to Verisign's poor record keeping.

Don't let it get you down.