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The good news: You will get the domain back. Contact both the winning and losing registrar immediately and explain the situation. Document everything. This is n

The good news: You will get the domain back. Contact both the winning and losing registrar immediately and explain the situation. Document everything. This is not a new situation to them and they will have step by step procedures to follow to allow you to regain control of said domain. The bad news: Depending on the registrars, it can take a stupid amount of time for the process to complete. A friend of mine had a similar situation (albeit with his personal blog domain, not a VC funded business) and it took him 60 days to regain control. Your best bet right now is putting direct, immediate pressure on both registrars that this is a serious deal (not a blog about cats) and you are ready to write press releases stating how incompetent they are for this and that. I expect others may chime in on this thread saying you should just be nice and not come off aggressive, however I must caution you on that approach. In any other industry, honey gets your more flies than shit but domain registrars are unlike other business's - They can and will take their sweet ass time for any reason. Keep in mind this is the land of 7 day domain transfers and archaic systems. Unless you apply direct, constant pressure to as many people as you find, you may be in limbo with the domain for a long time. Start flexing your might a little bit (which I suspect you have, since you are a VC funded startup) and you might find the domain back in your account in 24 hours. edit below One important thing I forgot to mention. I know you said it was likely phishing, but make sure the machine isnt infected. Changing the gmail password and going through this huge process isnt going to be fun to do a second time. That and depending on the timelines the registrars give you when you contact them, you might want to contact any customers or clients that your domain might be hijacked shortly. Last thing you want is your customers getting malware trying to visit your site.

hijackedStartUp 16y ago
Some additional info: - Not my domain. I'm the "sunshine cleaner". - The startup, VC and both registrars are not American (though some of the investors are well known). - The domain is a dot com. - Support line has been opened with the "loosing registrar" (some time was lost on figuring out the original registrar is just a reseller). - There is an emergency plan in place for moving service to another domain. It is not simple as it is a fairly big service. I'm a little concerned about contacting the "winning registrar" before getting some traction at the "loosing registrar" given that it might "wake up" the attacker and that this registrar is known to be problematic (and thus was probably chosen as landing). Comments?

hijackedStartUp 16y ago

Some additional info: - Not my domain. I'm the "sunshine cleaner". - The startup, VC and both registrars are not American (though some of the investors are well known). - The domain is a dot com. - Support line has been opened with the "loosing registrar" (some time was lost on figuring out the original registrar is just a reseller). - There is an emergency plan in place for moving service to another domain. It is not simple as it is a fairly big service. I'm a little concerned about contacting the "winning registrar" before getting some traction at the "loosing registrar" given that it might "wake up" the attacker and that this registrar is known to be problematic (and thus was probably chosen as landing). Comments?