Yes, it is absolutely a thing. Such squatters capitalize on people who registered a domain name, but didn't finish the process of bringing up a site (or a park

Yes, it is absolutely a thing. Such squatters capitalize on people who registered a domain name, but didn't finish the process of bringing up a site (or a parking site, etc.). Here's another example: Let's say you have an old domain (abc.example.com) that you used to host on GitHub Pages. Time goes by, and you decide to retire the site: You unconfigure the GitHub Pages configuration, so going to abc.example.com gives a GitHub 404 error, but you don't remove the relevant DNS records. In this example, some time later, a person might come by, notice that you have abc.example.com pointing to GitHub Pages, but not have a GitHub Pages site. That person can then spin up their own GitHub repo, and squat on your domain. In this example, you can reclaim ownership of your GitHub Pages by contacting GitHub Support: They would likely ask you to put a TXT record in your DNS, as proof of ownership. As for Digital Ocean, I'm not sure what they'll do. But indeed, yes, this sort of squatting is a thing.