13 ms·

How I finally won my name from domain resellers after nine years of waiting

176 points by jerryalex 7y ago

orliesaurus 7y ago
Good for you Jerry! I hope I never forget my renewal myself! Luckily I use Gandi as a registrar and they're good about reminders to their clients!
- koolba 7y ago
  I have a recurring notice every 3 months to remind me to check expirations. Takes a few minutes each season and hasn’t failed till now.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I have Google Domains autorenew my domain for me. Does Gandi have something similar?
  - ksangeelee 7y ago
    I use Gandi - yes they offer auto-renewal of domains, configurable on a per-domain basis.
  - orliesaurus 7y ago
    Yes
  - icebraining 7y ago
    I think auto-renewal is quite universal nowadays; the problem is keeping the payment method up to date!
- jerryalex 7y ago
  Thank you! I don't remember which registrar I used back then, but I wish I had used something like Gandi. I'm using Google domains now
- techsupporter 7y ago
  A couple of years ago, I renewed the three domains I care most about (a three-letter one, my name, and a domain I've had since they were free from hostmaster) for as long as their respective gTLD registries would permit. I figure that plus a script I have that checks them for shenanigans[0] should keep them in good order. 0 - Checks every 30 minutes for changed nameservers, domain contacts, and if the renewal date is less than six months in the future. Texts me immediately if it there's a difference or once a week if no changes noted (so I know the script ran).
zamadatix 7y ago
I settled on ds.gy after a lot of searching. At the time I was hoping for as short as possible unless you operate a domain (it's one letter off for standard, 2 if you operate a 2 letter TLD like http://ai./ http://ai./) since it maximizes the efficiency of DNS tunneling. I was expecting a lot of similar uses or a log of clever things/url shortners like t.co but what I found was basically every single and most every dual letter domain was being squatted. Made me a little sad until I saw one that matched my initials and decided that was good enough.
- Godel_unicode 7y ago
  > like http://ai./ http://ai./ Slightly off topic, but it annoys me to no end that verisign doesn't operate a website at http://com./ http://com./ I feel like people typing that in, then wondering what the heck just happened would be a great source of people understanding DNS more deeply.
  - worez 7y ago
    out of curiosity, how does that work?
    - lstamour 7y ago
      This is surprisingly hard to explain off the cuff. In DNS, zones are separated by dots, and a fully-qualified domain name ends in a dot. The zones exist because there are too many domains for just one server to handle and this way zones can be distributed and managed separately. DNS queries right to left, for “Google.com.” it would look at “.” and query the root servers asking if they know “Google.com.”, they could reply saying ask “.com.” at this IP. Then the .com. servers look up Google.com. and (eventually, there’s one more lookup for a Google server) return its IP address. Google.com. loads in your browser because an A record is returned by a Google name server. “ai.” is an A record returned by the name server for .ai, as registered in the root DNS servers. Similarly, Verisign could register an A record for .com. But they haven’t... um... Google for how DNS works for a more thorough and perhaps animated example.
outworlder 7y ago
This is great and all unless your domain drops and it is caught by something like dropcatch.com or competitors.
- jerryalex 7y ago
  It was caught by dropcatch actually. I didn't bid in the auction though. Eventually it was released.
  - morenoh149 7y ago
    sounds like you didn't want the domain?
    - jmts 7y ago
      This is addressed in the article. He wanted the domain, but didn't want to pay more than necessary for it. This includes avoiding an auction that could unnecessarily inflate the price.
sergiotapia 7y ago
Some bottom feeder stole my personal domain after I let it lapse and is now literally holding it hostage for $6000 last I checked. http://sergiotapia.me/ http://sergiotapia.me/ I just bought sergio.dev, the squatter can choke on my old domain.
- prawn 7y ago
  If you let it lapse, is "stole" a bit strong? I'd think "stole" would be getting your login/email and transferring the domain away while you had it registered?
  - markdown 7y ago
    I think stole, while not technically correct, is appropriate. The squatter had no intention of using the domain. They jumped on a domain that had just expired and registered it in the hope that the previous owner had made a mistake and might be willing to pay them an exorbitant amount of money to get it back.
    - cerberusss 7y ago
      I think it's more likely they registered it in the hope that it's valuable in general. Not that the previous owner had made a mistake.
      - ryanmercer 7y ago
        I let a previous, business, domain go a few years ago. 3-4 months later I started getting mail offering to sell it back to me for several thousand dollars from some scumsucking company. Jokes on them, I let it expire because I was done with that property. They mailed me every week or two for several months and it was definitely a "we send thousands of these a day, this is blatantly a form letter that we've copy pasted your semi-nonsensical domain into"
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    It's more like you dropped your wallet on the street and the guy walking behind you picked it up and won't give it back unless you pay him.
kylecazar 7y ago
Timely. Not very relevant, but I just sold a domain I've owned for 5 years after being contacted by GoDaddy's brokerage service about an interested buyer. It was actually cathartic for me -- not only did I realize that I may seem like the squatter to someone else in this situation, but it forced me to come to terms with the fact that I won't be working on that idea, ever.
- markdown 7y ago
  > it forced me to come to terms with the fact that I won't be working on that idea, ever. I think this is a feeling so many people working in the web sphere have to contend with at some point.
  - hermitdev 7y ago
    I had this, myself. I had a similarly named domain in the early 2000s. I think, technically, I was there first, and I had my name registered as a combo of a gaming tag + "tech" in the domain name. If I had more resources, maybe I could have secured the name, but they jad had a full company, and I wad just exploring amd didnt have anything commercial in the works. I decided to just let it go and let my domain expire. I didnt approach the company to try and sell it, just let it expire. I wasn't squatting, amd I intended to use it, but the purpose didn't materialize, so I let it go. I never had any communication from the similarly named company; I dont even know if theyre still around. I just didnt renew when my time expired.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
drewroberts 7y ago
Took me a while to get mine. Glad more people can avoid the John Malkovich problem: https://youtu.be/vNInrUkctc4 https://youtu.be/vNInrUkctc4 https://youtu.be/YjzYaLxplbw https://youtu.be/YjzYaLxplbw
yonran 7y ago
Have any TLDs attempted to implement a property tax on domains according to value to reduce cyber squatting? To implement a property tax, Glen Weyl and Eric Posner have proposed using self-assessment so that users pay what they want (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2818494 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2818494 and https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Markets-Uprooting-Capitalism-Democracy/dp/0691177503/ https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Markets-Uprooting-Capitalism-...)
- rhizome 7y ago
  What are the terms by which value is measured?
  - yonran 7y ago
    In the paper by Glen Weyl linked above, the property tax should be set at about 1/normal turnover rate (e.g. 1/30 years = 3.3% per year), owners should declare their own assessed value for which they pay the tax (e.g. on the $1500 asking price in the article, the tax could be about $50/year assuming a 3.3% tax rate), and then if someone else wishes to buy the property they can purchase at the same self-assessed value.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      That sounds terrible. Companies should not have to pay millions of dollars per year to keep their domain safe. If a website-needing company pays based on how badly it would hurt them to lose that site, it would destroy their margins. If they pay a more reasonable amount, or if they're just a smaller company, they're vulnerable to competitors kicking them offline at a whim. Land is pretty much the only area where taxing a significant percentage of value makes sense, and even then it's frustrating and awful to do it with a buyout system.
    - rhizome 7y ago
      So the holder assigns their own "make me move" price? For e.g. Disney this would be "infinity," and I've taken a math class recently enough to know that 3.3% of infinity is infinity.
ElijahLynn 7y ago
If it was 9 years, then the squatters definitely won.
- buzzerbetrayed 7y ago
  How do you figure? Doesn't that mean the squatters paid for it for 9 years and never ended up selling it?
- kylec 7y ago
  No one won. The squatters lost money, the guy lost time.
  - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
    I don't know about Game Theory, but is it correct to call this outcome a Nash Equilibrium? Edit: I thought about it for a while, and it seems incorrect to say so. If the buyer's strategy is "always wait", and the seller's strategy is "always sell at an outrageous price", it should be a Nash Equilibrium, similar to a Prisoner's dilemma. But the buyer's strategy is actually "buy if the price is reasonable, wait if not", so the broker can always choose to lower the price to a reasonable level, both allowing the blogger to purchase the domain name, and profits from it. But the broker doesn't appear to be rational enough to choose this strategy, possible due to stupidity or limitations of the business model. What is the suitable term for this phenomenon?
14 7y ago
After reading this I thought what the heck let’s see if I can grab my name. For 15$ I now own my name at a .ca domain. I know I need to find a host I think but literally have no website experience or idea what I need to do next lol.
- sumedh 7y ago
  A .com is more valuable than .ca
  - techsupporter 7y ago
    I disagree. If the person is Canadian and the domain isn't for a "generic brand," then no, I'd actually say that .ca is more valuable than .com. It makes the name more personal to the individual and, in an industry where a lot of us have our own domains, uniqueness can be more valuable.
    - 14 7y ago
      I am Canadian. I have no direction for a website, pondered a few ideas over the years, but no exact need for a website at this point in time. But now that I own my domain perhaps I will slap something together and see what comes if it. But like I mention I know very little about how to do any of this. But I do like reading HN so information is something I find interesting. I hope I can find some obscure way to use my domain.
      - reificator 7y ago
        The default is simply to use it for a personal email address. Then redirect HTTP requests to whatever page you'd want someone to see, like a github profile or whatever.
    - sumedh 7y ago
      Op's comment says the .com is for 3500 USD so the market thinks a .com is more valuable.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
Can someone explain why there isn't a rule that if you let a domain lapse then it stops working, but you have a year to renew it again before anybody else can buy it? Even if you really didn't want it anymore and somebody else did (and didn't want to wait the year), they could always just ask/pay you for it.
- unreal37 7y ago
  I mean, there's like 40 days to renew a domain once it expires. So you want to extend 40 days to 365? [1] The thing is, if you forgot to renew your domain, and didn't do it even 40 days after the expiry date, are you going to do it 365 days after? I think 40 days is a lot of time to check your email and see 20 emails from your registrar screaming at you to renew... [1] https://www.dynadot.com/community/help/question/renewal-grace-period https://www.dynadot.com/community/help/question/renewal-grac...
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > I think 40 days is a lot of time to check your email and see 20 emails from your registrar screaming at you to renew... Apparently it isn't when so many people have it happen to them that there is a profitable business in registering the names right after they expire in order to sell them back to the original owners. And there are a lot of domains, especially for personal use, that you might not notice disappear right away. The registrar has your old email that you don't check very often, the domain is for a low-traffic site you don't check very often, it takes a while for you to realize it. Meanwhile I can't see any legitimate disadvantage in it at all -- what's the big rush to assign the name to somebody else without the original owner's permission? Also: > Some domain extensions do not offer renewal and/or redemption periods or offer them for different lengths of time.
- em-bee 7y ago
  gandi.net gives you a month after expiry to renew at the regular price, and then another period i think longer than a month to renew at a higher price.
unreal37 7y ago
I think a lot of people don't know what "domain squatting" is. If there's a domain you want, but someone else has it but is not using it, that's not squatting. If you let your personal name domain expire, and someone else registers it, that's not squatting. In order for it to be squatting, they have to be trying to profit off a trademark. I assume Jerry Alex is not a trademark. "Cybersquatting (also known as domain squatting), according to the United States federal law known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, is registering, trafficking in, or using an Internet domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting
- ohashi 7y ago
  Also 'I had forgotten to renew it and it was immediately snatched up' means they didn't notice renewal emails, didn't notice the website stopped working, if it truly expired, it takes months go through that process without them noticing.
  - crazydoggers 7y ago
    Yes, this. People complaining about failed renewals always leave this out. On top of not noticing renewal notices, there’s a 45 day renewal grace period where you can renew the domain after it expires. And even if you miss that, there’s another 30 redemption grace period, where you can pay a fee and have the name restored anyway. So you’re usually talking at least 2-3 months of not noticing or caring. Registrars are also required to email domain holders and ask them to update their contact information and email yearly. So you’ve really got no excuse if you lose a domain via expiration.
    - SenHeng 7y ago
      It happens sometimes. I once owned a domain via MediaTemple registered to an account that no longer existed. I tried but MT wouldn't let me renew the domain even with proof that I was the owner other account (whois contact info, cc purchase history). Only way to get that domain back was to let it expire and hope no one took it.
techntoke 7y ago
I personally think that some engineers should just help create some dockerized name servers that can be deployed and do away with ICANN altogether, that way you can have your own TLD without paying $15,000+ dollars a year.
- kortex 7y ago
  It kind of amazes me that we cannot resolve arbitrary strings as TLD's. Yeah let the .com's and country codes get locked down by the regs, but there's an almost-nowhere-dense space of strings. I guess the hard part is in resolving contention over particularly desirable strings.
rudiv 7y ago
I have solved this by cunningly being born outside of the anglosphere. I own my first name domain in my native language's script (.com) as well as in Latin (.dev, my people are too plentiful for me to have got the . com).
bashwizard 7y ago
I was in a similiar situation where I have the same name, spelling and all as a very famous person in my country. So this person had the .com domain and I waited 7 years for it to be dropped and eventually the person switched to our country's domain instead.
segfaultbuserr 7y ago
Still waiting to get mine. I registered my first domain name from my national provider, and always wanted to move the domain aboard to the U.S. or a European registrar, however, the bureaucratic process of initializing a transfer is ridiculous. It's not an important domain name, so I decided to take the risk and allow the domain to expire, so I could re-register it. Unfortunately, the dropped domain was instantly caught by a broker. Waiting mode...
kkarakk 7y ago
I don't think name as domain is important anymore since it's pretty much a numbers game - it is unlikely you'll get your name as a .com domain(the only domain that matters if you want more than a toy website) is going to either be squatted on or already occupied. There needs to be some sort of TLD with authentication. Let's call it .name You only get .name if you do a KYC/register with the government.In case of collision you get bidding wars, however the money goes to a non profit internet charity. Instant SEO and a guarantee that you actually get to have a web presence without gatekeeping.
- vidarh 7y ago
  Of course there is actually a ".name". I co-founded the company that set it up, and the original idea was to share the second level so you'd get full control over firstname.lastname.name with e-mail forwarding from [first name]@[last name].name. This followed an e-mail service (Nameplanet) we set up when two of us were discussing how we were both basically blocking a whole [lastname].[tld] domain for ourselves. Unfortunately .name largely proved too hard to communicate quickly enough, and meanwhile it's clear that people for the most part don't mind weird addresses and/or don't have an issue with seeing e-mail addresses as transient. Which I find quite weird, given I've had the same e-mail address for 20 years at this point. Today .name is operated by Verisign, and second level registrations were enabled years ago, and I do occasionally see them, but the original concept really was part of a wave of people talking about "digital identities" on the net that just died off, in part I think because it seems most of the time peoples identity is much more fluid outside of very official circumstances. E.g. you don't necessarily always want your e-mail address to give away your full name, or your name at all, and in the more formal contexts (e.g. work) you often have another e-mail address anyway and/or your e-mail address is not an important element. Incidentally, in retrospect I wonder if ".nom" or ".nym" or one of the other proposed names would have been (marginally) easier - people often hear ".name" and think it's a placeholder for a name, especially when you try to explain that your e-mail address is [your first name]@[your last name].name. I use my .com of the same format, and it seems to lead to fewer questions than when I also had/used my .name.
  - icebraining 7y ago
nathan_f77 7y ago
I would like to get nathanbroadbent.com one day. The only problem is that the current owner is also named Nathan Broadbent, and they're also a software developer and startup founder. (This has caused some confusion a few times, such as identity verification for a bank, and during an interview with US immigration.) ndbroadbent.com will do for now!
xtiansimon 7y ago
My first domain name was my full name (never occurred to me to look for my initials). Then maybe a year after I was able to get the full name of my brothers and mom and dad and gave this as a holiday gift. After a year they let them expire. :p I have a few domains for projects I want to do. Unfulfilled dream squatting. But for me the thrill of buying domains was always to nab that hip domain name. Some favorites—which I never owned but wish I did: JoanieLovesChachi.com, Superbad.com. Hahah makes me laugh every time.
cyborgx7 7y ago
I had some luck with a .de domain of my name that was being squatted. There are some judgements in Germany that say you have a special right to the domain with your name, and it's not just first come first serve. I don't remember what exactly I did because it happened a while ago. But it involved sending a physical letter to Denic pointing out that this was domain was my name. I never heard back, but when I checked in a while later, the domain was free for the taking and I bought it. I assume this only worked because it was a squatter and not someone else with the same name.
charlesdm 7y ago
Would you mind sharing how much they actually wanted for it? Are we talking 9 years of waiting, vs $500, or 9 years of waiting, vs $10,000? Regardless, congrats on getting it back.
- OJFord 7y ago
  Says $1500 in the post.
  - charlesdm 7y ago
    Sorry, I missed that -- cheers!
cm2187 7y ago
Don't know if one can call that "domain squatting", but it's worth buying young kids a domain after their name while it is still available. The chance that it will be useful to them one day is pretty high.
- notzuck 7y ago
  Pretty high? Even most of my nerd friends don't have their own name registered.
lioeters 7y ago
Good for you! I enjoyed reading about your persistence and eventual triumph, knowing how shady the business of domain squatting is. > Generally, these auctions will drive up the price by bidding on their own domains to get you to pay more. This practice feels like a form of fraud, but I guess it's not against any law..? > I had also initially setup the script to auto-purchase the domain, but that failed due to Namecheap not recognizing the domain availability in time. Interesting to hear this, as I was curious about using their API to automate domain purchasing as part of a larger web service. I imagine they cache results and refresh periodically, which is good enough for most purposes.
- davinic 7y ago
  Shill bidding is illegal in most places, and if not, would definitely be under the fraud umbrella, although IANAL.
flurdy 7y ago
I have way too many domain names, but I like it. I have several .uk, .no and .com for my own name, e.g. firstname.tld or firstnamelastname.tld. All redirecting to my main site. For the first decade or two that was fine as usually the first page or two on a Google search of my name was all me. Very vain. Though I think there are many that shares my Norwegian name, most were not early internet adopters. However in the last few years, some of the people that also share my name have started to creep up the search result, i.e. they have been covered in news articles or websites of their own. I have now started to feel guilty for hogging all the good domain names. If one of them reach out I would probably hand one of the domain names over at cost or share it somehow. Though recently I have "reclaimed" some of the first page on Google as the search now states the infamous "Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe" at the bottom. Someone did not want to be infamous. Wasn't me, honest. I also feel slightly guilty for the few Irish people that have my username as their firstname. Sorry, but I am keeping those domain names.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  >However in the last few years, some of the people that also share my name have started to creep up the search result, i.e. they have been covered in news articles or websites of their own. I have now started to feel guilty for hogging all the good domain names. If one of them reach out I would probably hand one of the domain names over at cost or share it somehow. Similar for me. I have RyanMercer.net .com .co.uk and almost 18 years of blog posts there but this guy in Canada had a fashion show a couple years ago and he comes up frequently now, and another 'name brother' in Canada was a kid with cancer and articles about him come up frequently, and of course the journalist in Vermont (haha so some girl matched me on Tinder last year and goes "I used to work for a Ryan Mercer!" and it was the journalist, also for years I would occasionally get email for him, his email address has an additional character where mine does not, I once got his wired.com credentials because whoever set them up omitted the character, as well as many of his assignments from employers, I also got medical and paystub info for one in the UK for the better part of a year, one in Georgia I get hotel reservations/appointment reminders/sometimes receipts for semi-regularly too...). I also discovered recently someone bought THEryanmercer.com. I however feel no guilt at all about owning the domains. I owned .net first (I don't know why I got it instead of .com first) and then grabbed the .com, being an Anglophile at some point I picked up the .co.uk just because. I always try to get ryanmercer on any social media service too, sadly by the time I got to twitter someone else had and had abandoned the account early on.
mruts 7y ago
My domain name was mentioned in a bunch of publications associated with a very famous national treason case. I’ve tried to get them to edit the articles to remove it as there’s no real journalistic value in it and just hurts me. Sucks to have a domain I’ve used for over 10 years for email and stuff to be rendered unusable by bad press.
bhartzer 7y ago
There is a big difference between domain squatting and domain investing. Or simply buying domains that drop. I don’t understand how you can say that it’s “domain squatting” on “your” name if you don’t own a trademark on the word or on your name. As others have pointed out, there may be other people who have the same name as you. How is it your name versus their name? My definition of domain squatting is buying a domain name that already has a trademark on it. The “rule” states that even if a word has a trademark, if someone bought the domain before the tm holder applied for the tm, then the domain owner still can own the domain. As long as it was not registered in bad faith. The key here is “bad faith”. Python scripts are no longer necessary to grab expired domains, that’s what backorder services are for. I recommend backordering the names of all your current sites just in case you fail to renew the name. Backorder it on multiple services, as it truly is a race to see which service gets it.
slowhand09 7y ago
I remember in the early-mid 1990's, we print (yes print) the entire list of register domains and laugh at the big company names NOT in the list.
sireat 7y ago
Curious on what experienced domain buyers would suggest in my case. After many years of procrastination I decided to see how much would it cost to purchase myfirstname.com (about 5k people in the world have this name). Turns out it is impossible to even enquire on purchasing this domain. The domain is not being used. Archive.org shows 3 hits in the last 15 years, all minimal parked pages, last hit being 2013. Domain registration is private. My whois-fu is rather weak. So what can I do to contact the owner? Some big name reseller is just sitting on this name for 10+ years and waiting for who knows what.
- diet_mtn_dew 7y ago
  You can either contact them through the privatized email in their whois info, or use a domain name broker who will attempt to purchase it on your behalf. I have never used one myself, but have had them email me about buying my domains.
iKevinShah 7y ago
I might be late at this discussion but does anyone know how to I can win my domain name back from Yahoo Small Business? Back Story: In 2005, when I was new to Computing world, I searched for "Free domain" and something led to another and Yahoo at the time bought the domain (while it seemed I would have to pay later). I did not use it and tried to see it in 2012 again, turns out someone was indeed using it (had same name), fair enough but now the domain is back with yahoo and I can not contact them at all. I tried their customer care [1], no reply. Also tried their forums, no reply. Cant get them on call either. Any suggestions? 1: https://help.smallbusiness.yahoo.net/s/ https://help.smallbusiness.yahoo.net/s/
epakai 7y ago
I had a domain 2004-2006 for an online alias. I was in high school and it was just for fun. Not even valuable or interesting. I let it lapse intentionally, but then it was held by somebody for 10 years. They finally dropped it in 2014 and someone else who had taken up the nickname registered it in 2016. I had mostly given up on the name anyway because I had collisions on a few services with 1 or 2 people using the same. Seems so silly to hold a domain like that. Shit for traffic. Hosted only hobbyist/personal content (easily verifiable on archive.org). I certainly wasn't going to shell out anything even if I could find who was holding it. They did have a contact/interest form at some points during those 10 years, but I know there were times when there was nothing. I avoided contact because I expected showing interest in it would prolong their hold or just result in a stupid price. Just a dead domain.

176 points by jerryalex 7y ago

Good for you Jerry! I hope I never forget my renewal myself! Luckily I use Gandi as a registrar and they're good about reminders to their clients!

koolba 7y ago
I have a recurring notice every 3 months to remind me to check expirations. Takes a few minutes each season and hasn’t failed till now.
saagarjha 7y ago
I have Google Domains autorenew my domain for me. Does Gandi have something similar?
- ksangeelee 7y ago
  I use Gandi - yes they offer auto-renewal of domains, configurable on a per-domain basis.
- orliesaurus 7y ago
  Yes
- icebraining 7y ago
  I think auto-renewal is quite universal nowadays; the problem is keeping the payment method up to date!
jerryalex 7y ago
Thank you! I don't remember which registrar I used back then, but I wish I had used something like Gandi. I'm using Google domains now
techsupporter 7y ago
A couple of years ago, I renewed the three domains I care most about (a three-letter one, my name, and a domain I've had since they were free from hostmaster) for as long as their respective gTLD registries would permit. I figure that plus a script I have that checks them for shenanigans[0] should keep them in good order. 0 - Checks every 30 minutes for changed nameservers, domain contacts, and if the renewal date is less than six months in the future. Texts me immediately if it there's a difference or once a week if no changes noted (so I know the script ran).

zamadatix 7y ago

I settled on ds.gy after a lot of searching. At the time I was hoping for as short as possible unless you operate a domain (it's one letter off for standard, 2 if you operate a 2 letter TLD like http://ai./ http://ai./) since it maximizes the efficiency of DNS tunneling. I was expecting a lot of similar uses or a log of clever things/url shortners like t.co but what I found was basically every single and most every dual letter domain was being squatted. Made me a little sad until I saw one that matched my initials and decided that was good enough.

Godel_unicode 7y ago
> like http://ai./ http://ai./ Slightly off topic, but it annoys me to no end that verisign doesn't operate a website at http://com./ http://com./ I feel like people typing that in, then wondering what the heck just happened would be a great source of people understanding DNS more deeply.
- worez 7y ago
  out of curiosity, how does that work?
  - lstamour 7y ago
    This is surprisingly hard to explain off the cuff. In DNS, zones are separated by dots, and a fully-qualified domain name ends in a dot. The zones exist because there are too many domains for just one server to handle and this way zones can be distributed and managed separately. DNS queries right to left, for “Google.com.” it would look at “.” and query the root servers asking if they know “Google.com.”, they could reply saying ask “.com.” at this IP. Then the .com. servers look up Google.com. and (eventually, there’s one more lookup for a Google server) return its IP address. Google.com. loads in your browser because an A record is returned by a Google name server. “ai.” is an A record returned by the name server for .ai, as registered in the root DNS servers. Similarly, Verisign could register an A record for .com. But they haven’t... um... Google for how DNS works for a more thorough and perhaps animated example.

outworlder 7y ago

This is great and all unless your domain drops and it is caught by something like dropcatch.com or competitors.

jerryalex 7y ago
It was caught by dropcatch actually. I didn't bid in the auction though. Eventually it was released.
- morenoh149 7y ago
  sounds like you didn't want the domain?
  - jmts 7y ago
    This is addressed in the article. He wanted the domain, but didn't want to pay more than necessary for it. This includes avoiding an auction that could unnecessarily inflate the price.

sergiotapia 7y ago

Some bottom feeder stole my personal domain after I let it lapse and is now literally holding it hostage for $6000 last I checked. http://sergiotapia.me/ http://sergiotapia.me/ I just bought sergio.dev, the squatter can choke on my old domain.

prawn 7y ago
If you let it lapse, is "stole" a bit strong? I'd think "stole" would be getting your login/email and transferring the domain away while you had it registered?
- markdown 7y ago
  I think stole, while not technically correct, is appropriate. The squatter had no intention of using the domain. They jumped on a domain that had just expired and registered it in the hope that the previous owner had made a mistake and might be willing to pay them an exorbitant amount of money to get it back.
  - cerberusss 7y ago
    I think it's more likely they registered it in the hope that it's valuable in general. Not that the previous owner had made a mistake.
    - ryanmercer 7y ago
      I let a previous, business, domain go a few years ago. 3-4 months later I started getting mail offering to sell it back to me for several thousand dollars from some scumsucking company. Jokes on them, I let it expire because I was done with that property. They mailed me every week or two for several months and it was definitely a "we send thousands of these a day, this is blatantly a form letter that we've copy pasted your semi-nonsensical domain into"
- reaperducer 7y ago
  It's more like you dropped your wallet on the street and the guy walking behind you picked it up and won't give it back unless you pay him.

kylecazar 7y ago

Timely. Not very relevant, but I just sold a domain I've owned for 5 years after being contacted by GoDaddy's brokerage service about an interested buyer. It was actually cathartic for me -- not only did I realize that I may seem like the squatter to someone else in this situation, but it forced me to come to terms with the fact that I won't be working on that idea, ever.

markdown 7y ago
> it forced me to come to terms with the fact that I won't be working on that idea, ever. I think this is a feeling so many people working in the web sphere have to contend with at some point.
- hermitdev 7y ago
  I had this, myself. I had a similarly named domain in the early 2000s. I think, technically, I was there first, and I had my name registered as a combo of a gaming tag + "tech" in the domain name. If I had more resources, maybe I could have secured the name, but they jad had a full company, and I wad just exploring amd didnt have anything commercial in the works. I decided to just let it go and let my domain expire. I didnt approach the company to try and sell it, just let it expire. I wasn't squatting, amd I intended to use it, but the purpose didn't materialize, so I let it go. I never had any communication from the similarly named company; I dont even know if theyre still around. I just didnt renew when my time expired.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

drewroberts 7y ago

Took me a while to get mine. Glad more people can avoid the John Malkovich problem: https://youtu.be/vNInrUkctc4 https://youtu.be/vNInrUkctc4 https://youtu.be/YjzYaLxplbw https://youtu.be/YjzYaLxplbw

yonran 7y ago

Have any TLDs attempted to implement a property tax on domains according to value to reduce cyber squatting? To implement a property tax, Glen Weyl and Eric Posner have proposed using self-assessment so that users pay what they want (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2818494 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2818494 and https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Markets-Uprooting-Capitalism-Democracy/dp/0691177503/ https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Markets-Uprooting-Capitalism-...)

rhizome 7y ago
What are the terms by which value is measured?
- yonran 7y ago
  In the paper by Glen Weyl linked above, the property tax should be set at about 1/normal turnover rate (e.g. 1/30 years = 3.3% per year), owners should declare their own assessed value for which they pay the tax (e.g. on the $1500 asking price in the article, the tax could be about $50/year assuming a 3.3% tax rate), and then if someone else wishes to buy the property they can purchase at the same self-assessed value.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    That sounds terrible. Companies should not have to pay millions of dollars per year to keep their domain safe. If a website-needing company pays based on how badly it would hurt them to lose that site, it would destroy their margins. If they pay a more reasonable amount, or if they're just a smaller company, they're vulnerable to competitors kicking them offline at a whim. Land is pretty much the only area where taxing a significant percentage of value makes sense, and even then it's frustrating and awful to do it with a buyout system.
  - rhizome 7y ago
    So the holder assigns their own "make me move" price? For e.g. Disney this would be "infinity," and I've taken a math class recently enough to know that 3.3% of infinity is infinity.

ElijahLynn 7y ago

If it was 9 years, then the squatters definitely won.

buzzerbetrayed 7y ago
How do you figure? Doesn't that mean the squatters paid for it for 9 years and never ended up selling it?
kylec 7y ago
No one won. The squatters lost money, the guy lost time.
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago
  I don't know about Game Theory, but is it correct to call this outcome a Nash Equilibrium? Edit: I thought about it for a while, and it seems incorrect to say so. If the buyer's strategy is "always wait", and the seller's strategy is "always sell at an outrageous price", it should be a Nash Equilibrium, similar to a Prisoner's dilemma. But the buyer's strategy is actually "buy if the price is reasonable, wait if not", so the broker can always choose to lower the price to a reasonable level, both allowing the blogger to purchase the domain name, and profits from it. But the broker doesn't appear to be rational enough to choose this strategy, possible due to stupidity or limitations of the business model. What is the suitable term for this phenomenon?

14 7y ago

After reading this I thought what the heck let’s see if I can grab my name. For 15$ I now own my name at a .ca domain. I know I need to find a host I think but literally have no website experience or idea what I need to do next lol.

sumedh 7y ago
A .com is more valuable than .ca
- techsupporter 7y ago
  I disagree. If the person is Canadian and the domain isn't for a "generic brand," then no, I'd actually say that .ca is more valuable than .com. It makes the name more personal to the individual and, in an industry where a lot of us have our own domains, uniqueness can be more valuable.
  - 14 7y ago
    I am Canadian. I have no direction for a website, pondered a few ideas over the years, but no exact need for a website at this point in time. But now that I own my domain perhaps I will slap something together and see what comes if it. But like I mention I know very little about how to do any of this. But I do like reading HN so information is something I find interesting. I hope I can find some obscure way to use my domain.
    - reificator 7y ago
      The default is simply to use it for a personal email address. Then redirect HTTP requests to whatever page you'd want someone to see, like a github profile or whatever.
  - sumedh 7y ago
    Op's comment says the .com is for 3500 USD so the market thinks a .com is more valuable.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

Can someone explain why there isn't a rule that if you let a domain lapse then it stops working, but you have a year to renew it again before anybody else can buy it? Even if you really didn't want it anymore and somebody else did (and didn't want to wait the year), they could always just ask/pay you for it.

unreal37 7y ago
I mean, there's like 40 days to renew a domain once it expires. So you want to extend 40 days to 365? [1] The thing is, if you forgot to renew your domain, and didn't do it even 40 days after the expiry date, are you going to do it 365 days after? I think 40 days is a lot of time to check your email and see 20 emails from your registrar screaming at you to renew... [1] https://www.dynadot.com/community/help/question/renewal-grace-period https://www.dynadot.com/community/help/question/renewal-grac...
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > I think 40 days is a lot of time to check your email and see 20 emails from your registrar screaming at you to renew... Apparently it isn't when so many people have it happen to them that there is a profitable business in registering the names right after they expire in order to sell them back to the original owners. And there are a lot of domains, especially for personal use, that you might not notice disappear right away. The registrar has your old email that you don't check very often, the domain is for a low-traffic site you don't check very often, it takes a while for you to realize it. Meanwhile I can't see any legitimate disadvantage in it at all -- what's the big rush to assign the name to somebody else without the original owner's permission? Also: > Some domain extensions do not offer renewal and/or redemption periods or offer them for different lengths of time.
em-bee 7y ago
gandi.net gives you a month after expiry to renew at the regular price, and then another period i think longer than a month to renew at a higher price.

unreal37 7y ago

I think a lot of people don't know what "domain squatting" is. If there's a domain you want, but someone else has it but is not using it, that's not squatting. If you let your personal name domain expire, and someone else registers it, that's not squatting. In order for it to be squatting, they have to be trying to profit off a trademark. I assume Jerry Alex is not a trademark. "Cybersquatting (also known as domain squatting), according to the United States federal law known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, is registering, trafficking in, or using an Internet domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting

ohashi 7y ago
Also 'I had forgotten to renew it and it was immediately snatched up' means they didn't notice renewal emails, didn't notice the website stopped working, if it truly expired, it takes months go through that process without them noticing.
- crazydoggers 7y ago
  Yes, this. People complaining about failed renewals always leave this out. On top of not noticing renewal notices, there’s a 45 day renewal grace period where you can renew the domain after it expires. And even if you miss that, there’s another 30 redemption grace period, where you can pay a fee and have the name restored anyway. So you’re usually talking at least 2-3 months of not noticing or caring. Registrars are also required to email domain holders and ask them to update their contact information and email yearly. So you’ve really got no excuse if you lose a domain via expiration.
  - SenHeng 7y ago
    It happens sometimes. I once owned a domain via MediaTemple registered to an account that no longer existed. I tried but MT wouldn't let me renew the domain even with proof that I was the owner other account (whois contact info, cc purchase history). Only way to get that domain back was to let it expire and hope no one took it.

techntoke 7y ago

I personally think that some engineers should just help create some dockerized name servers that can be deployed and do away with ICANN altogether, that way you can have your own TLD without paying $15,000+ dollars a year.

kortex 7y ago
It kind of amazes me that we cannot resolve arbitrary strings as TLD's. Yeah let the .com's and country codes get locked down by the regs, but there's an almost-nowhere-dense space of strings. I guess the hard part is in resolving contention over particularly desirable strings.

rudiv 7y ago

I have solved this by cunningly being born outside of the anglosphere. I own my first name domain in my native language's script (.com) as well as in Latin (.dev, my people are too plentiful for me to have got the . com).

bashwizard 7y ago

I was in a similiar situation where I have the same name, spelling and all as a very famous person in my country. So this person had the .com domain and I waited 7 years for it to be dropped and eventually the person switched to our country's domain instead.

segfaultbuserr 7y ago

Still waiting to get mine. I registered my first domain name from my national provider, and always wanted to move the domain aboard to the U.S. or a European registrar, however, the bureaucratic process of initializing a transfer is ridiculous. It's not an important domain name, so I decided to take the risk and allow the domain to expire, so I could re-register it. Unfortunately, the dropped domain was instantly caught by a broker. Waiting mode...

kkarakk 7y ago

I don't think name as domain is important anymore since it's pretty much a numbers game - it is unlikely you'll get your name as a .com domain(the only domain that matters if you want more than a toy website) is going to either be squatted on or already occupied. There needs to be some sort of TLD with authentication. Let's call it .name You only get .name if you do a KYC/register with the government.In case of collision you get bidding wars, however the money goes to a non profit internet charity. Instant SEO and a guarantee that you actually get to have a web presence without gatekeeping.

vidarh 7y ago
Of course there is actually a ".name". I co-founded the company that set it up, and the original idea was to share the second level so you'd get full control over firstname.lastname.name with e-mail forwarding from [first name]@[last name].name. This followed an e-mail service (Nameplanet) we set up when two of us were discussing how we were both basically blocking a whole [lastname].[tld] domain for ourselves. Unfortunately .name largely proved too hard to communicate quickly enough, and meanwhile it's clear that people for the most part don't mind weird addresses and/or don't have an issue with seeing e-mail addresses as transient. Which I find quite weird, given I've had the same e-mail address for 20 years at this point. Today .name is operated by Verisign, and second level registrations were enabled years ago, and I do occasionally see them, but the original concept really was part of a wave of people talking about "digital identities" on the net that just died off, in part I think because it seems most of the time peoples identity is much more fluid outside of very official circumstances. E.g. you don't necessarily always want your e-mail address to give away your full name, or your name at all, and in the more formal contexts (e.g. work) you often have another e-mail address anyway and/or your e-mail address is not an important element. Incidentally, in retrospect I wonder if ".nom" or ".nym" or one of the other proposed names would have been (marginally) easier - people often hear ".name" and think it's a placeholder for a name, especially when you try to explain that your e-mail address is [your first name]@[your last name].name. I use my .com of the same format, and it seems to lead to fewer questions than when I also had/used my .name.
- icebraining 7y ago

nathan_f77 7y ago

I would like to get nathanbroadbent.com one day. The only problem is that the current owner is also named Nathan Broadbent, and they're also a software developer and startup founder. (This has caused some confusion a few times, such as identity verification for a bank, and during an interview with US immigration.) ndbroadbent.com will do for now!

xtiansimon 7y ago

My first domain name was my full name (never occurred to me to look for my initials). Then maybe a year after I was able to get the full name of my brothers and mom and dad and gave this as a holiday gift. After a year they let them expire. :p I have a few domains for projects I want to do. Unfulfilled dream squatting. But for me the thrill of buying domains was always to nab that hip domain name. Some favorites—which I never owned but wish I did: JoanieLovesChachi.com, Superbad.com. Hahah makes me laugh every time.

cyborgx7 7y ago

I had some luck with a .de domain of my name that was being squatted. There are some judgements in Germany that say you have a special right to the domain with your name, and it's not just first come first serve. I don't remember what exactly I did because it happened a while ago. But it involved sending a physical letter to Denic pointing out that this was domain was my name. I never heard back, but when I checked in a while later, the domain was free for the taking and I bought it. I assume this only worked because it was a squatter and not someone else with the same name.

charlesdm 7y ago

Would you mind sharing how much they actually wanted for it? Are we talking 9 years of waiting, vs $500, or 9 years of waiting, vs $10,000? Regardless, congrats on getting it back.

OJFord 7y ago
Says $1500 in the post.
- charlesdm 7y ago
  Sorry, I missed that -- cheers!

cm2187 7y ago

Don't know if one can call that "domain squatting", but it's worth buying young kids a domain after their name while it is still available. The chance that it will be useful to them one day is pretty high.

notzuck 7y ago
Pretty high? Even most of my nerd friends don't have their own name registered.

lioeters 7y ago

Good for you! I enjoyed reading about your persistence and eventual triumph, knowing how shady the business of domain squatting is. > Generally, these auctions will drive up the price by bidding on their own domains to get you to pay more. This practice feels like a form of fraud, but I guess it's not against any law..? > I had also initially setup the script to auto-purchase the domain, but that failed due to Namecheap not recognizing the domain availability in time. Interesting to hear this, as I was curious about using their API to automate domain purchasing as part of a larger web service. I imagine they cache results and refresh periodically, which is good enough for most purposes.

davinic 7y ago
Shill bidding is illegal in most places, and if not, would definitely be under the fraud umbrella, although IANAL.

flurdy 7y ago

I have way too many domain names, but I like it. I have several .uk, .no and .com for my own name, e.g. firstname.tld or firstnamelastname.tld. All redirecting to my main site. For the first decade or two that was fine as usually the first page or two on a Google search of my name was all me. Very vain. Though I think there are many that shares my Norwegian name, most were not early internet adopters. However in the last few years, some of the people that also share my name have started to creep up the search result, i.e. they have been covered in news articles or websites of their own. I have now started to feel guilty for hogging all the good domain names. If one of them reach out I would probably hand one of the domain names over at cost or share it somehow. Though recently I have "reclaimed" some of the first page on Google as the search now states the infamous "Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe" at the bottom. Someone did not want to be infamous. Wasn't me, honest. I also feel slightly guilty for the few Irish people that have my username as their firstname. Sorry, but I am keeping those domain names.

ryanmercer 7y ago
>However in the last few years, some of the people that also share my name have started to creep up the search result, i.e. they have been covered in news articles or websites of their own. I have now started to feel guilty for hogging all the good domain names. If one of them reach out I would probably hand one of the domain names over at cost or share it somehow. Similar for me. I have RyanMercer.net .com .co.uk and almost 18 years of blog posts there but this guy in Canada had a fashion show a couple years ago and he comes up frequently now, and another 'name brother' in Canada was a kid with cancer and articles about him come up frequently, and of course the journalist in Vermont (haha so some girl matched me on Tinder last year and goes "I used to work for a Ryan Mercer!" and it was the journalist, also for years I would occasionally get email for him, his email address has an additional character where mine does not, I once got his wired.com credentials because whoever set them up omitted the character, as well as many of his assignments from employers, I also got medical and paystub info for one in the UK for the better part of a year, one in Georgia I get hotel reservations/appointment reminders/sometimes receipts for semi-regularly too...). I also discovered recently someone bought THEryanmercer.com. I however feel no guilt at all about owning the domains. I owned .net first (I don't know why I got it instead of .com first) and then grabbed the .com, being an Anglophile at some point I picked up the .co.uk just because. I always try to get ryanmercer on any social media service too, sadly by the time I got to twitter someone else had and had abandoned the account early on.

mruts 7y ago

My domain name was mentioned in a bunch of publications associated with a very famous national treason case. I’ve tried to get them to edit the articles to remove it as there’s no real journalistic value in it and just hurts me. Sucks to have a domain I’ve used for over 10 years for email and stuff to be rendered unusable by bad press.

bhartzer 7y ago

There is a big difference between domain squatting and domain investing. Or simply buying domains that drop. I don’t understand how you can say that it’s “domain squatting” on “your” name if you don’t own a trademark on the word or on your name. As others have pointed out, there may be other people who have the same name as you. How is it your name versus their name? My definition of domain squatting is buying a domain name that already has a trademark on it. The “rule” states that even if a word has a trademark, if someone bought the domain before the tm holder applied for the tm, then the domain owner still can own the domain. As long as it was not registered in bad faith. The key here is “bad faith”. Python scripts are no longer necessary to grab expired domains, that’s what backorder services are for. I recommend backordering the names of all your current sites just in case you fail to renew the name. Backorder it on multiple services, as it truly is a race to see which service gets it.

slowhand09 7y ago

I remember in the early-mid 1990's, we print (yes print) the entire list of register domains and laugh at the big company names NOT in the list.

sireat 7y ago

Curious on what experienced domain buyers would suggest in my case. After many years of procrastination I decided to see how much would it cost to purchase myfirstname.com (about 5k people in the world have this name). Turns out it is impossible to even enquire on purchasing this domain. The domain is not being used. Archive.org shows 3 hits in the last 15 years, all minimal parked pages, last hit being 2013. Domain registration is private. My whois-fu is rather weak. So what can I do to contact the owner? Some big name reseller is just sitting on this name for 10+ years and waiting for who knows what.

diet_mtn_dew 7y ago
You can either contact them through the privatized email in their whois info, or use a domain name broker who will attempt to purchase it on your behalf. I have never used one myself, but have had them email me about buying my domains.

iKevinShah 7y ago

I might be late at this discussion but does anyone know how to I can win my domain name back from Yahoo Small Business? Back Story: In 2005, when I was new to Computing world, I searched for "Free domain" and something led to another and Yahoo at the time bought the domain (while it seemed I would have to pay later). I did not use it and tried to see it in 2012 again, turns out someone was indeed using it (had same name), fair enough but now the domain is back with yahoo and I can not contact them at all. I tried their customer care [1], no reply. Also tried their forums, no reply. Cant get them on call either. Any suggestions? 1: https://help.smallbusiness.yahoo.net/s/ https://help.smallbusiness.yahoo.net/s/

epakai 7y ago

I had a domain 2004-2006 for an online alias. I was in high school and it was just for fun. Not even valuable or interesting. I let it lapse intentionally, but then it was held by somebody for 10 years. They finally dropped it in 2014 and someone else who had taken up the nickname registered it in 2016. I had mostly given up on the name anyway because I had collisions on a few services with 1 or 2 people using the same. Seems so silly to hold a domain like that. Shit for traffic. Hosted only hobbyist/personal content (easily verifiable on archive.org). I certainly wasn't going to shell out anything even if I could find who was holding it. They did have a contact/interest form at some points during those 10 years, but I know there were times when there was nothing. I avoided contact because I expected showing interest in it would prolong their hold or just result in a stupid price. Just a dead domain.