Domain News

As unconvered by Domain Name Wire, Godaddy has joined the ranks of registrars that participate in the participate in Domain Warehousing practices. Domain Warehousing means the practise where a registrar keeps domains for themselves after the original registrant fails to renew the domain. Tucows, one of the registrars that is more open about following this practise, came under a public crossfire after Michael Berkens of The Domains reported about Tucows selling names which they had taken over when the original registrant failed to renew the domains. eNom, which has been following similar practices hiding the domain names from their portfolio behind whois privacy, has recently launched a sales site for those domains as well.

Apparently GoDaddy is going out of their way in order to hide the fact that they too, take over expired domains from registrants. They set up a company aptly named “Standard Tactics, LLC“, which takes over some domains that have not sold on GoDaddy’s TDNAM site and continues to monetize them.

Read the full details over at Domain Name Wire.

Original post by Frank Michlick

After Network Solutions introduced enhanced whois listings a little more than a year, eNom introduced a similar service today in an email going to registrants. The charge for the service is $20 per year and apparently the service also offers “featured listings” on the directory site, which is currently marked as a “private beta”.

According to the promotional email the listing helps to:

Promote critical details about your business through your domain registration information–searched by millions of consumers through eNom, other domain registrars, and several search engine web crawlers.

Add your Business Listing in up to 5 separate categories located on the Whois Business Listings directory, www.whoisbusinesslisting.com.

Increase your online visibility through major search engines.

(c) 2008 DomainNameNews.com

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Original post by Frank Michlick

Fast on the heels of the recent Enom phishing scam, another phishing attack attempting to con domain name registrants into providing their customer information is under way. Network Solutions (NSI) domain customers are the target this time.  The spam email messages being sent out warn the user of their domain expiring.  Current reports show that the domain name com42.asia is being used and disguises itself as a site that looks identical to NetworkSolutions.com.  As the public and internet providers become aware of the abuses, both the Enom and NSI phishing attackers are adapting to these reports by changing the domain name addresses they use.  See full phishing email after the link.

Dear Network Solutions Customer,

We recently notified you that the registration period for your Network
Solutions domain name had expired. As a benefit of having previously
registered a domain name(s) with Network Solutions, you are eligible to
receive a percentage of the net proceeds that were generated from the
renewal and transfer of the domain name you chose not to renew. Since you
have chosen not to renew the domain name listed below during the
applicable grace period, we were successful in securing a backorder for
this domain name on your behalf and it has been transferred to another
party in accordance with the Service Agreement.

Renew your domain now - http://www.networksolutions.com.com42.asia

You must click on the following link, enter your domain name, and confirm
your contact information in order to claim these funds. If your contact
information is not correct, you must enter Account Manager and make the
appropriate changes prior to clicking “submit” from the confirmation
screen. If you do not do this, you will be confirming inaccurate
information and will not receive any payment. Checks will only be made
payable and mailed to the Account Holder of record.

Sincerely,

Network Solutions® Customer Support

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Original post by Adam Strong

We have received several reports of phishing scam emails that at first glance appear to be coming from domain name registrar Enom.com. The emails warn of a complaint for invalid whois information and ask the user to login. Of course the link that the email directs you to is not a valid Enom domain name. The site is likely harvesting user names and passwords to access legitimate Enom accounts.

The link in the email actually takes you to the domain name co⫰.biz .  When we attempted to visit the site McAfee put up a warning page that said

Reported Web Forgery!  This web site at www.enom.com.com92.biz has been reported as a web forgery and has been blocked based on your security preferences.

Web forgeries are designed to trick you into revealing personal or financial information by imitating sources you may trust.Entering any information on this web page may result in identity theft or other fraud.

If you do get to the site it is designed to look exactly like the enom home page. The domain is registered by a Russian at the Chinese registrar OnlineNic . A copy of the email is below.

On Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:25:34 +0300, “eNom Team” &ltinfo2@enom.com&gt said:
Dear user,

On Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:25:34 +0300 we received a third party complaint of
invalid domain contact information in the Whois database for this domain.
Whenever we receive a complaint, we are required by ICANN regulations to
initiate an investigation as to whether the contact data displaying in
the Whois database is valid data or not. If we find that there is invalid
or missing data, we contact both the registrant and the account holder
and inform them to update the information.

The contact information for the domain which displayed in the Whois
database was indeed invalid. On Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:25:34 +0300 we sent a
notice to you at the admin/tech contact email address and the account
email address informing you of invalid data in breach of the domain
registration agreement and advising you to update the information or risk
cancellation of the domain. The contact information was not updated
within the specified period of time and we canceled the domain. The
domain has subsequently been purchased by another party. You will need to
contact them for any further inquiries regarding the domain.

PLEASE VERIFY YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION - http://www.enom.com.com92.biz

If you find any invalid contact information for this domain, please
respond to this email with evidence of the specific contact information
you have found to be invalid on the Whois record for the domain name.
Examples would be a bounced email or returned postal mail. If you have a
bounced email, please attach or forward with your reply or in the case of
returned postal mail, scan the returned letter and attach to your email
reply or please send it to:

Attn: Domain Services
14455 N Hayden Rd
Suite 219
Scottsdale, AZ 85260

LINK TO CHANGE INFORMATION - http://www.enom.com.com72.biz

Thank you,
Domain Services

[IncidentID:14166]

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Original post by Adam Strong

Jeremiah Johnston, the president of the Internet Commerce Association has responded to Kentucky’s seizure of 141 gambling domain names.

“The Internet Commerce Association is aware of the extreme concern of ICA members regarding the action of the Kentucky Attorney General ordering the seizure of 141 gaming related domain names. It appears that there may be no statutory basis for this unprecedented action, that Kentucky may lack sufficient jurisdictional grounds and that it also may violate the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution.

The ICA intends to immediately investigate this matter, including outreach to affected ICA members as well as to those registrars subject to the Kentucky order. Once we have gathered additional information, the Board will consider further appropriate action to confront this dangerous precedent.”

While it seems unlikely the seizure will withstand legal challenge, it has created a lot of controversy in the domain industry.

Earlier this week Enom became the first registrar to transfer the targeted domains that were listed with them - HighRollersLounge.com and LuckyCasino.com (whose registrant died of a heart attack this summer)- to the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Strangely enough, these two domains no longer resolve, going against the court order’s instructions which state the “domain configurations shall remain unchanged.”

According to TheDomains, the court hearing is scheduled for Thursday morning, September 25. Anybody who had their domains listed for seizure must be represented at the hearing or the domains will be officially seized.

[Update]: ICA initially stated incorrectly that this seizure order was initiated by the Kentucky Attorney General. I received this statement from the Kentucky Attorney General’s office. “The initiative was taken by Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear. The Attorney General’s Office has no involvement in the seizure of the gaming domain names.”

[Update 2]: Word at the TRAFFIC Conference is that GoDaddy is not planning to hand over the domains registered through them.

[Update 3]: The hearing has been postponed until tomorrow. [via TheDomains]

[via ICA and TheDomains]

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Original post by Chad Kettner

eNom has recently made two significant changes. First, the domain registrar introduced their redesigned website which provides additional emphasis on their reseller service. Next, they announced a hike in domain registration fees that was directly impacted by Verisign’s October Price Increase announced in March.

If you’re going to purchase or renew your domain names, you should do so before October. Visit eNom’s website for more information on the price adjustment.

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Original post by Chad Kettner

Solid Host, a popular registrar in the Netherlands, has filed a lawsuit against Namecheap and Demand Media (eNom) for $100,000 after losing their main domain SolidHost.com following a hijack.

“This domain hijack was the result of an error at the end of our domain registrar (eNom),” said SH-Andre of the SolidHost Crew on their forums, “We suspect they had a security breach on their end, resulting in the fact that the hijacker was able to move our domain away from eNom to another registrar without our authorization. More in-depth information on this subject will be posted shortly.

[via SolidHost Forums]

(c) 2008 DomainNameNews.com

Domain Convergence, October 6-8, 2008, Niagara Falls

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Original post by Chad Kettner

Domain registrar and parking company Fabulous.com announced today a partnership that pairs the company up with expiring domain auction site Namejet.com . Effective August 1st all of the Fabulous.com company owned expiring domain names will be auctioned through NameJet.com.

According to an announcement sent to customers, Fabulous.com will be running their own expiring domain inventory through the Namejet system as a test beginning August 1st. The test will allow them to determine whether the solution is a viable option for selling Fabulous registrant customers expiring domain names as well. The company seems to be planning to launch the service for customers in the future with an opt-in feature but they have yet to determined the details of the arrangement :

This would be an opt in service, where you would receive funds on a revenue share basis for any of your expiring domains that are sold.

Namejet.com currently includes NetworkSolutions and Enom among the registrars that run their expiring domain inventory through the NameJet expiring domain auction marketplace.

The full company announcement after the jump.

Fabulous released the information to their users/customers after a leak by Namejet.com surfaced this weekend at Namepros.

From August 1, NameJet will be listing deleted and expiring domain names from the Fabulous registry. In the initial stages, only domains owned by Domain Active (which is a sister company of Fabulous.com) will be auctioned off.

Like all new product developments, we will be testing the NameJet platform with our own portfolio first. If the tests are successful we will be making this available to our third party partners such as yourself. This would be an opt in service, where you would receive funds on a revenue share basis for any of your expiring domains that are sold.

Just to re-iterate, initially only our own domains are included in this partnership, and any domains that you do not renew will go through the normal drop/delete cycle.

Once we have more information about the possibility of releasing this to third parties, we will be sure to let you know.

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Original post by Adam Strong

There’s a bit of controversy swirling around the expiring domain name after-market as reports of “insider bidding” have been raised at NamePros and DomainNameWire.com. According to DomainNameWire the topic of NSI and Enom employees bidding at NameJet was discussed with an employee over the phone.

Enom Sr. VP Taryn Naidu informed DomainNameNews.com that this is not the practice at Namejet.com

I have no idea how anyone got the ‘information’ that Namejet allows employees to bid but I can tell you that it not the case. We definitely do NOT let employees compete in auctions. Even if controlled, that practice has bad news written all over it.

We have both report monitoring of account purchases and also IP monitoring of backorders and bids.

(c) 2008 DomainNameNews.com

Domain Convergence, October 6-8, 2008, Niagara Falls

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Original post by Adam Strong

According to a report by PEhub, Demand Media has raised another $35 million USD in series D financing. Richard Rosenblatt’s company has now raised $355 million in total VC funding since its March 2006 founding.

bulkregister, demand media, enom, hotkeys, NameJet, richard rosenblatt

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Original post by Frank Michlick

Attorney John Berryhill addresses an important issue that seems to be ignored by some U.S. based registrars: Doing business with Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) and countries under US sanctions is against the law.

Berryhill’s article points to several obvious violations of the law by registrars including Network Solutions, Godaddy and Enom who all appear to be conducting business with Sudanese businesses. The Sudanese businesses all have registered domain names through these U.S. based registrars and more specifically the companies Berryhill references are listed as SDNs. (more…)

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cuba, Department of Treasury, enom, godaddy, ICANN, law, networksolutions, registrars, sanctions, Specially Designated Nationals, Sudan

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Original post by Adam Strong

Two individuals have filed a complaint in US Federal Court in California accusing ICANN, Registerfly.com and Enom.com of anti-trust activities  [pdf document].  (more…)

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Anti trust, enom, godaddy, ICANN, registerfly, RICO

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Original post by Adam Strong

After the previous phishing attempts targeting TrafficZ customers it appears that now eNom customers are the target of a new email scam. The best protection against these types of attacks that try to get you to enter your username and password on a fake site, is to enter the URL directly into your browser instead of clicking links in your email.

(c) 2008 DomainNameNews.com

Develop Your Domains - Partner with Domain Strategies to Take Your Domains to the Next Level. Visit www.DomainStrategies.com for a free portfolio assessment.

enom, phishing

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Original post by Frank Michlick

The New York Times posted an interesting article regarding Steve Marshall, an English travel agent that had 80 websites blacklisted by the United States government. According to the story, the Treasury Department told eNom to disable Marshall’s tourism sites because they helped Americans evade travel restrictions to Cuba. This case raises the issue of free speech online and how much of the internet a government should be allowed to control.

[via New York Times]

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cuba, domains, enom, government

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Original post by Chad Kettner