Domain Registration Scam? - 08-Nov-07
The Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) of ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is investigating a potential scam involving domain names. The question is - who are the scammers? Do they actually exist?
The suggestion is that if someone visits whois.net, either directly or through an ISP (internet service provider), a third party is monitoring the process. So if I test the availability of a potential domain name for future commercial purposes without making an immediate commitment, there is anecdotal evidence that the name may be registered by someone else before I return to contract for the name.
Once the third party has registered the name(s), attempts are made to resell them at a premium. Such activity has historically existed in the financial stock markets where the process is sometimes known as "front running".
Complaints filed with ICANN and intellectual property lawyers suggest that examples of such malpractice exist, although SSAC "does not yet have any hard data to draw conclusions".
Whilst SSAC/ICANN is investigating the possibilities, I feel inclined to ask whether we need rocket scientists to investigate such possibilities? Surely, there would be some commonality of activity - or of internet "footprint" - that would enable investigators to check out such allegations fairly quickly? I cannot imagine there is much profit to be achieved from creating a new organisational identity for each pre-emptive strike, therefore, businesses operating such a scam more than once should stick out like the proverbial sore thumb to anyone with a capacity for logical analysis.
SSAC Advisory Document
Source: NFP Techno editor@nfptechno.org.uk
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