Hypothetical Domain scenario

Old_Skool

A friend of mine had a little dabble in the Domain name game a few years ago. He bought one Domain of a famous company but with a 'K' in the name instead of a 'c' thinking he could sell it on for a little profit. He approached this famous company offering the Domain which could be used to link to their site - no interested. A few days later he received a solicitors letter threatening legal action if was to populate the site with similar products or offer the site to a competitor and it was in his interest to transfer the Domain to them for free.

After that little tale it certainly makes you wonder ..... if a large company wants a Domain they'll get it somehow.

Given all the emails that have been sent to you incorrectly maybe you should cancel that hotel room....... but after the allowed cancellation period.:rotfl:

If this guy is in business you have to wonder how he is still trading

Blacksheep1979

fairly sure that it would constitute theft or fraud - obviously thats up to you.

superscaper

Blacksheep1979 wrote: »

fairly sure that it would constitute theft or fraud - obviously thats up to you.

As I said I've already reported it so this is purely hypothetical (I thought I'd made that clear enough).

I mean I don't even have to do anything frudulent to take it pretty far, e.g. make sure all the details of my account are accurate for me, change the names of the accounts etc. All things that I can do because it's my account. If that affects someone else's domain that can hardly constitute fraud as I'm only changing my account. As for the transfer of the domain then I guess it would be fraud if I agreed to anything that states I was the one that registered the domain. But anything else I should be allowed to do because if I'm not then it is essentially stopping all the actions I could've performed on my account anyway.

superscaper

Nominet have got back to me and I can do one of two things to sort it out. Either I can request to the registrar that I no longer want the domain renewed or I can fill in a surrender form to get Nominet to cancel it directly. Both methods effectively require me to commit fraud because they require me to do it as if I'm the original registrant of the domain.

So Blacksheep1979, what do you make of that, I really don't want to do anything fraudulent but it appears that ANYTHING I do would need me to claim I was the registrant, even merely to get it removed from my account. Ironic that even though I'm genuinely trying to do the right thing, there doesn't seem to be any way of clearing this up without claiming to be the registrant and getting the domain stopped.

isofa

I have a couple of domains for projects, that it now transpires are similar to another companies domain (mine being .co.uk, theirs is a .com had no idea when I registered). If ever I had one in error (I had a catch all forwarding), for the past year I've always replied back to the person emailing saying you've got the wrong address, but I don't think I was ever thanked, so now if they aren't sent to a specific user on my domains (most were to info@), they get bounced or trashed.

Surely if the person who registered used your email and address, he's committed so some of fraud or ID theft, whether it be missing a hyphen out or anything else is just a technicality. So you must be within your rights to cancel the domain, especially if you've discussed it with Nominet. I'd certainly state this to Nominet and say you want it stopped, even though you aren't the "legal" owner, as effectively you are getting harassed by all the emails.

PS I'll PM you a good contact at Nominet.

superscaper

isofa wrote: »

I have a couple of domains for projects, that it now transpires are similar to another companies domain (mine being .co.uk, theirs is a .com had no idea when I registered). If ever I had one in error (I had a catch all forwarding), for the past year I've always replied back to the person emailing saying you've got the wrong address, but I don't think I was ever thanked, so now if they aren't sent to a specific user on my domains (most were to info@), they get bounced or trashed.

This is what would happen normally with all my other domains and even this one doesn't have catch all forwarding. But the address I give out to my friends, family, coworkers is [EMAIL="firstname@firstnamelastname.co.uk"]firstname@firstnamelastname.co.uk[/EMAIL] which is unfortunately a common format for personal domains is it not, and hence why this guy just happened to give out an address I actually use. It's too impractical for me to change that particular address, had it been any other it would have been easy to just block it off.

superscaper

isofa wrote: »

Surely if the person who registered used your email and address, he's committed so some of fraud or ID theft, whether it be missing a hyphen out or anything else is just a technicality. So you must be within your rights to cancel the domain, especially if you've discussed it with Nominet. I'd certainly state this to Nominet and say you want it stopped, even though you aren't the "legal" owner, as effectively you are getting harassed by all the emails.

PS I'll PM you a good contact at Nominet.

Well I've contacted the registrar and said I don't want that domain and gave my actual email address, which presumably is the contact address they'll have for it as well now. So I haven't said I'm the registrant, I've said quite factually that I don't want the domain and I've given my email address so I've essentially made a cancel of renewal request without being fraudulent. I've not heard anything back yet so I wonder if I'm being ignored precisely because I'm not the registrant.

superscaper

Damn it, I've literally just now received my first ever phishing email to that address (I've never had so much as one spam email to it). Can't be coincidence. I don't hand it out to companies (only to register on Nominet) I only give it to people I know personally, and this guy has been giving my address out to who knows who (certainly companies).