Stolen Domain Names

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It’s appalling to hear that VeriSign (aka Network Solutions | Internic) is STILL letting people steal domain names!

“…it appears that it is still possible to steal domains with the minimum of effort. We have been contacted by the owner of the valuable domain DVDmovies.com who was amazed, only last month, to find that his domain had been moved and registered with another company, without his knowledge.”

“That the registrar at fault was no less than VeriSign – owner of all .com and .net domains – makes it worse. The fact that the company was also recently chastised by the US Appeals Court and ordered to pay millions of dollars in compensation to the owner of Sex.com for wrongly transferring his domain makes it all the more incredible.”

Over the years I had the misfortune of having two separate domain names stolen due, IMHO, to the ineptness of VeriSign.

One domain I was never able to get back, mainly because I (and the company I worked for at the time), just gave up trying to work with VeriSign.

The other domain was transferred to another owner via a forged email. I was actually alerted to the theft-in-progress before the domain was transferred because the thief’s initial forgery attempts bounced back to me.

In fact, I contacted VeriSign (at the time Network Solutions) and told them there was a theft of my domain in progress. They assured me that they would put a hold on the domain.

The next day… Poof! My domain was gone! VeriSign approved the transfer anyway.

It then took me weeks to finally wrestle the domain back after hours of being on hold, numerous emails, letters and evil faxes back-and-fourth with VeriSign detailing the clear, plain-as-day, evidence that they even confirmed of the forged transfer.

Ugh! I could not believe how easy it was for a thief to steal a domain, it’s sad to hear that it’s still an open issue.