Whois and domain Search Snoopers

Bamber19

I'm not sure if this is common knowledge or not but some of you may have noticed this. There seems to be a group of advert/holding companies who have the ability to see what domain names have been searched for on various domain name sites and then buy them up. I first came across this when I searched for a domain i used to own and found it to be available. During the couple of hours it took to get a reply from an associate about whether he felt it was worthwhile to get the domain name again it was snapped up, fine i thought, just a coincidence. I then googled the name of the company who now owned it and found forum articles complaining about the same thing, searching for a domain then this company snapping it up an hour later. Since then(only a couple of months ago) this domain name has been around 5 different ad companies and was available again last night. We decided we're no longer interested in the domain name anyway but it the situation has interested me, I should add that it is no longer available as, once again, within an hour of my search it was snapped up.