OT: Buying domains

[Thomas Darrell Lee]

Is it just me or do these sites somehow trigger a buy for them in order
to sell domains back to you at a premium whenever you do a search for a
new domain? Example, at Namecheap.com I did a search for a domain name
and it said the name was available. I came back maybe 10 minutes later
and searched for the same name again it was no longer available.

Any thoughts? And btw, GoDaddy does the same thing...just saying

--
Thomas Darrell Lee
Advanced Data LLC
864-230-9626 | dl...@adsi-sc.com

[Robert Meier]

Domain owners,

Users Group wrote:
> Is it just me or do these sites somehow trigger a buy for them in order
> to sell domains back to you at a premium whenever you do a search for a
> new domain?  Example, at Namecheap.com I did a search for a domain name
> and it said the name was available.  I came back maybe 10 minutes later
> and searched for the same name again it was no longer available.

This is called domain-squatting (by dns trolls)
(https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/domain-squatting), and (IANAL)
prosecutable (illegal under) 1999 Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection
Act (ACPA)
(https://repository.law.uic.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1120&context=jitpl)
as well as pre-existing state and federal, trademark, fraud,
anti-extortion laws.

Illegal does not mean it doesn't happen.
IANAL, I recommend finding and using a reputable domain registrar,
and keep a good lawyer on retainer if able.
I would like to hear from this list current (dis)recommendations for
ethical registrars.



Starting in 2000, NameCheap had a good (and IMHO earned) reputation for
ethical behavior, scrupulously avoiding domain squatting, and successful
mitigating squatting by others.
I hope they have remained such in recent years.

When DNS originated in 1985, to supplement route-based addressing and
distributed routing tables, ARPANET and domain registration was managed
by IEEE (and other volunteers) under US DOD supervision.
For the first decade after 1989 (when when commercial restrictions were
lifted and name changed to internet), IEEE volunteers continued to
manage domains with DOD recommendation.

Shortly before ICANN was created in 1998 to take over registries
formerly run for or by DOD, some volunteers continued managing their
registries, IEEE spawned a reputable commercial dns registrar, and a
plethora of niche registrars were spawned by different industry and
trade advocacy groups.

Unfortunately even more numerous dns registrars were started by those
seeing a quick buck.
In the first few years, dns trolls were rampant.
Some of these trolls were openly and proudly extorting tens of millions
of dollars, before a naive public.

Expensive law cases set precedent that use of a computer, rather than
paint and paper, did not grant immunity to trademark infringement,
counterfeiting, and identity theft.

The ACPA amortized some law efforts, and IMHO seemed to make prevention
steps by reputable registrars effective, starting the decline of dns
trolls (or their shift to other malware practices).
I believe NameCheap was started as a low-cost (no-frills) reputable
response, similar in goals to that of LetsEncrypt certificate authority
today.

I sincerely hope that we are not seeing a return to rampant squatting or
an ethical decay in previously reputable service providers.

[Scott Sandefur]

Many registration sites will try to sucker you into enrolling a new domain through them. This is a lot of how they make their money.  It's much like a real estate agent offering to represent you to purchase a house.  Their offer to register & host for you is typically legit, but can get pricey depending on your needs. BUT, then again, you can shop around for better if the site isn't being squatted-on (see previous response from R.Meier ) or already in quasi-use. There are many hosting sites out there that are relatively-free to host a very small website w/ no e-commerce capabilities, i.e. a basic presence page. But, you will still have to pay a relatively cheap domain registration fee these days.  There are few caveats for how much this will actually cost which includes where the site will be hosted and whether it is a truly brand-new web domain or not.

One host service that I like is: webfreehosting.net. They have virtually no spamming to their customer list. Unlike host sites like Go-Daddy that will nearly constantly try to upsell you on something, or will make it seem like you owe them something when you shouldn't. And webfreehosting wont hijack your domain or jack up your fees immediately if you forget to pay any legit fees you may actually have. They have some grace in that regard. Although, they will "park" your site for a while hoping you just made a mistake and are still planning to use it.  One downside, they're based in Germany. So some customer services can be slow-ish at times for US customers. Their tech support is pretty tight though.

Cheers and Best of Luck,

Scott Sandefur

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[shay walters]

In the past, I've run into sites that will do some kind of
pre-registration on a name that you search for, so if you try to shop
around for a cheaper price, everyone else will say it's not available,
but the first site will still sell it to you, at a premium. But I
haven't heard of it happening if you search with the same site as the
first time.

On Sat, Jul 29, 2023 at 12:24 PM 'Thomas Darrell Lee' via Upstate
Carolina Linux Users Group <uc...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>

[Ensley Feemster]

have you tried accessing a site name instead of asking if it is available?

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[shay walters]

You can also use "whois" with your command prompt to see if a name is
already registered.

-Shay

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[shay walters]

I should point out that the whois database contains only .COM, .NET,
.EDU domains and Registrars.

[Darrell Lee]

I thought about that but never tried it

Darrell Lee

Advanced Data LLC

dl...@adsi-sc.com

864-230-9626

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[Darrell Lee]

So I switched to using the domain lookup at icann.org to see if a domain was available as a solution.

Thanks everyone for your input !!!

Darrell Lee

Advanced Data LLC

dl...@adsi-sc.com

864-230-9626

[George Law]

I also prefer whois.

Just tested it from one of my fedora 38 machine -

I tested it with a .org domain as well as the sc.us base domain for pickens county schools pickens.k12.sc.us

both worked for me.

I know in the old days I had seen domains used in search results show as registered if I returned to the same registrar a few days later ...

I think I had seen this on goddaddy but its been a few years ... currently using domains.google.com for all of mine.

On Mon, Jul 31, 2023 at 12:25 AM shay walters <shayw...@gmail.com> wrote:

I should point out that the whois database contains only .COM, .NET,
.EDU domains and Registrars.

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[Dan Calloway]

George,

I use Google domains as my registrar for all my domains. Have for several years now and have had no issues.

Dan Calloway
Linux Veteran; Open Source Advocate
Asheville, NC
"If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if 
from many authors, it's research."

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[Datapioneer]

Scott,

Unfortunately, webfreehosting.net will only let you transfer a domain over to them if you sign up for their Business Hosting Plan @ $5.99/month.