I just saw a post on a message board where the poster lost her domain name to a cybersquatter because she didn’t get the notifications from her reseller about the upcoming expiration of her domain name. The cybersquatter (NEOASIA CO. LTD.) is going to sit on that domain name for at least a year, unless she ransoms it back from them or can afford to pursue legal action and try to regain her domain name that way.
Yuck.
But why?
“I’m just Joe Schmoe, not Dan Brown or anyone famous. Who would want my name as a domain?”
Cybersquatters, in almost every case. Once in a while, it might be someone that shares the same name and has been waiting for the domain to free up, but that’s a pretty rare occurrence. You can verify that it’s a squatter pretty easily.
Use whois to look up the new owner of your domain name. In the case of the domain name that spawned this post, whois.domaintools.com tells me:
Registrant Search: “NEOASIA CO. LTD.” owns about 1,417 other domains
Email Search: nameopen@gmail.com is associated with about 712 domains
Pay attention to the sheer number of domain names they’re sitting on. Further, in the contact information, they’ve gone so far as to advertise “DOMAIN MAY BE FOR SALE”. Definitely a squatter.
“But it just expired! How do they know so fast?”
Domain squatters use sites like JustDropped.com to find out what’s available–they can either search for specific keywords they want or just go through the list and grab anything that looks likely, either to cash in on the traffic or hoping the original owner will ransom it. Often they’ll pick domain names they want before they’ve actually expired and use a service that will let them back order currently registered domains.
“But why would they want my domain name?”
Basically, it’s because for ten bucks (or maybe less) they can buy all the established credibility your site has on the internet. They buy all the traffic from places that have linked to your site, all the reputation associated with your site, your placement in search results, everything. Think of all the comments you’ve ever left on blogs where you entered the URL of your website, all the friends who’ve linked you in their sidebars, every guest blogging appearance or short story in an e-zine or book review that’s got a link back to your site attached. That’s all the stuff that’s worth something to them.
After a few months of their link farm sitting on your URL, the traffic and search rankings will drop. Then they’ll be willing to cash out by allowing you to buy back your domain from them at an exorbitant price.
What to do if this happens to you
Get yourself a new domain name. Check to see if alternative TLDs are available. If the name you lost was example.com, try to get example.net.
If your email uses your domain name change it immediately. If your email address is something like me@example.com, you need to to set up a new email address and then log in to all your accounts everywhere–Amazon, Paypal, your bank, eBay, etc.–and update them with your new address right away. Many sites will send password reset instructions to your registered email address as a way of verifying your identity. If someone has picked up your domain name, they can also get any mail intended for you just by setting up a “me@example.com” mailbox. You can set up an email address at Gmail.com.
Note: If you later set up an email address using your new domain name, you can either set a gmail account to forward mail or to use multiple addresses. You won’t have to log in to all these sites and change your address again. More on this in another post.
Make sure you get the word out about your domain change. You want to prevent, as much as possible, the people squatting on your domain from benefiting from traffic intended for you. Make sure you update your profiles on sites like Twitter, RedRoom, MySpace, Facebook and anywhere else you’ve listed your website. Use Google to help find sites linking to yours and notify them of the domain name change. (Replace “example.com” with your domain name.) Unfortunately there’s nothing you can do about business cards or fliers you’ve handed out.
Note: if you regain your domain name, you won’t have to do all this again. You can just set up a simple redirect via your registrar’s control panel.
Sign up for an alert so you’re notified if the squatters let the registration on your domain lapse. You can use the alert service from Network Solutions to be notified when your domain name is available again. The good news is, if they don’t get much traffic and can’t get anyone interested in the domain name, the squatters will probably drop the domain in a year or two–it’s not worth paying the registration fees on a name nobody visits or seems to care about.
Consider legal action. Under U.S. law 15 USC 1129, “any person who registers a domain name that consists of the name of another living person, or a name substantially and confusingly similar thereto, without that person’s consent, with the specific intent to profit from such name by selling the domain name for financial gain to that person or any third party, shall be liable in a civil action by such person.”
Also check out this site for more information on internet law, cybersquatting and domain name disputes.
Legal action may be prohibitively expensive, but it’s worth noting that if the squatters don’t bother responding to a complaint, you may be able to get a default judgement. Consult a lawyer with expertise in internet law.
How to prevent this from happening to you
Turn on auto-renewal. Back when I was using Aplus.net they automatically enabled an auto-renew option. If you use an auto-renew feature you need to be aware that it will require saving your payment information on the site, and that you need to keep that information up to date. (They can’t auto-renew using an expired credit card.)
Make sure you opt-in to any alerts and notifications, if necessary. I’ve never had to opt in to notification for expiration warnings, but double check in your control panel to make sure.
Make sure your contact information is up-to-date with your registrar. My host/registrar (ICDsoft) sends regular warnings when one of my domain names is about to expire. They also hold the domain name for a few days past expiration so you can still renew even if the registration has expired. But none of that would matter if my email address wasn’t up-to-date and I didn’t get the notices.
Be redundant. Schedule reminders, starting at least a week before expiration in Google Calendar or Outlook or whatever time management software you use.
Register for multiple years. Not only do you not have to renew every year, but many resellers offer a discount that makes cheaper in the long run than renewing on a yearly basis. The maximum renewal period allowed is ten years.
Make sure you know your registrar’s renewal and deletion policies. When a domain name expires it gets auto-renewed at the registry and your registrar is charged the renewal fee. The registrar can cancel the domain within 45 days for a refund. Reputable domain registrars will offer a grace period after expiration, since the domain has already been renewed to them.
Some registrars will take the opportunity to charge vastly increased renewal fees or auction the domain names. (The widely popular registrar GoDaddy does both of these things, along with some domain squatting of its own.)
