Category Archives: Alleged Cybersquatter

Knows a thing or two about domain names

Embrace for impact

by Nameslave Posted on 21 November 2011

I for one am not a big fan of those TOTALLY USELESS “parking” pages, with ad placements that are “misleading” to say the least. But we are still living in Capitalism after all, and there’s very little we can do.

More importantly, it’s technically difficult to define “proper use” of domain names. How about an “under construction” page? And how about an under construction page with ad placements? Are we going down the dangerous path of censoring content at the registrars’ level (like some “cowboy” registrars already doing)?

Industry outsiders may not know, but domain names could be used for backend purposes like mail, data and name servers as well. So who is to judge if a domain name is “properly used”?

The closest we could get is perhaps to incorporate a justification policy like that for IPs, but I doubt it’s even relevant when we’re heading to a brave new world of .whatever gTLDs, not to say domain names as we knew have already become less critical (essential) with Facebook and Twitter. (Embrace for impact.)

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Registrant Rights and Responsibilities

by Nameslave Posted on 21 July 2011

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has created a document outlining the relationship between ICANN and a domain Registrar, as well as the rights and responsibilities that registrants have with their Registrar when they have a domain name registered through them. The entire document can be found here.

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How I Sold My Grandfather

by Nameslave Posted on 14 March 2011

A few years ago, I picked up IRONROAD.COM (after bidding more than US$300). I decided to use it for my flagship project, because it’s a transliteration of RAILROAD in Chinese; and we all know that our grandfathers actually travelled from China and helped build the Canadian Pacific Railway here back in the 19th century. So to me, “iron road” carries not only that connotation of a reliable network but also part of my heritage (so to speak).

Anyway, fast forward to less than 12 months later, the only Swedish entity I know (other than IKEA) came forward (albeit anonymously at first) and made an irresistible offer (of US$3,000, or an ROI of some 900%) to buy out this domain name, apparently for their mobile technology company (originally hosted at IRONROAD.SE). And this is how I sold my grandfather.

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Even I fell victim to GoDaddy renewal trick

by Nameslave Posted on 2 June 2010

Just got an email from GoDaddy early this morning, saying that my credit card was already charged for another year of their auction membership. Luckily, it’s just $4.99, which I would take as giving it to some panhandlers (beggars).

Thinking back, it was when I bought an expiring domain from their “aftermarket” (tdnam.com) that they trickily included that membership when I checked out. Yes, it’s my bad to be not alertive enough, knowing that I am dealing with GoDaddy. Should have deleted my credit card record there and changed my renewal setting instead of leaving it to its default.

Sent them a support ticket, but no, I’m not even asking for a refund, because it’s clearly a trick that I fell for, and they have some fine prints to cover their … back. What I asked was to delete my credit card info from their record and never to bill be again EVER; and last but not least, to delete all my accounts with them.

By the way, I HAD to send them a ticket, because I was not even able to delete my payment method after logging in (saying it was being linked to whatever something).

Now tell me, how on earth could I recommend a registrar like this?

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[Network Solutions] This is what I called “transfer-unfriendly”

by Nameslave Posted on 6 January 2009

I haven’t logged into Network Solutions for years. Today I did, trying to transfer away a domain for one of my clients who has paid for their “penalty” 5 years in advance. I unlocked the domain there; and as an organized person, I also updated my email, phone number as well as my password and “secret question”.

Now, about 20 minutes after I initiated the transfer at OpenSRS, I got an email from NetSol with the subject “Unable to Process Your Domain Transfer Request”, because that domain “has been locked due to potentially suspicious activity in your account”. My blood pressure immediately went up.

You could have guessed that by suspicious activity, they are referring to my updating of contact info and password. It turns out (after wasting another 8 minutes on the phone) that any such change within 7 days of a transfer request will be flagged, and the domain locked for 30 days. So consider this a warning, for those who still go with Network Solutions. I have not bought a single domain there for more than 5 years, even with my $7.95 transfer and $11.99 new registration pricing.

I’m not sure if it’s my Gold VIP status (those who are stupid enough to have spent $1,500 with them; and I have spent way more than that on just 1 single day), but I was told that security lock will be removed in a couple of business days. I’m glad that I kind of foresee such little tricks, and have decided to start the ball almost 2 months ahead. No, I don’t buy that it’s for the good of the registrant (owner). I hate transfer-unfriendly registrars.

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Why would anyone register a .CA with Register.com??

by Nameslave Posted on 26 November 2004

Why on earth would anyone register a .CA domains with Register.com, which does NOT allow just *any* modification on-line (incl. contact info and nameservers). The only way to do that is to call them, spell out the changes, and they’ll send that via their ticket system, so you could acknowledge it. Can you believe it? And they are not even a CIRA-certified registrar (reselling for Webnames.ca)!

Not me, of course. I just signed up a client for web design and hosting, and her previous webmaster was stupid enough to use Register.com for a .CA, even when he is also Canadian. So I wasted an extra couple of hours, first talking to Register.com’s silly support personnel (one of them insisted that their “not up-to-date” record is authoritative instead of the official CIRA whois), then transferring it out, and finally changing the registrant field back to the rightful owner (that stupid ex-webmaster even used his name to register the domain back then, so so professional!). Damn it!

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Registrar forgot to renew their own domain

by Nameslave Posted on 2 October 2003

Shhh … don’t tell anybody else:

DreamHost, the host that I’ve been using for more than 4 years, was down yesterday morning (I guess probably from the early hours). Its domain actually resolved to Verisign‘s much hated Site Finder! A few hours later, I got an e-mail from them saying that “due to a problem renewing our dreamhost.com domain registration, it lapsed today”. Can you believe this?

The irony is: they are actually an ICANN-accredited registrar themselves, under the name Domainitron and are also the registry manager of .la!! Someone is going to be spanked for not transferring their OWN domain away from NetSol, which they are still using. LOL!

Having said that, they are really a bunch of very nice guys.

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