Cybersquatted
Domain name squatting is nothing new. Some of the latest variations are link farms that artificially pump up a site in Google search results, and fake re-blogs that re-publish articles on legit blogs. Apparently, even more elaborate schemes exist.
My neighborhood has had a domain and a website for some time. I took over its administration two years ago. After receiving very poor service from the web host (applications breaking, slow response times, etc.), I moved the site over to my own server at somnius.com. However, when I tried to transfer the domain, a .org, to somnius, the previous web host blocked me. Apparently the domain was still registered to the previous administrator. After spending way too much time trying to get through the red tape, I gave up and decided to let the .org domain expire. I registered the same domain as a .com, pointed it to the site on somnius, and we were up and running.
After the .org expired earlier this month, I went to snarf it up so that I could have both the .com and old .org pointing to the site. To my surprise, I find that the .org had been registered out from under me by a company based out of Thailand called Transliner Consultants. Apparently, they had grabbed the .org almost the same minute it expired.
Some quick research on Transliner Consultants finds that they have a suspicious record of fraudulent domain name registration, and have over 450 domain names registered as of today. I suspect that these guys busy-wait on expiring domains, then register them quickly, hoping to capture traffic for ad revenue, or in order to sell them back to the previous owner for an unreasonable price.
In this case, it doesn’t matter. The domain was just for a neighborhood website, and having the .com is more than good enough. We’ll survive just fine without the .org.