"stealing" domain names by Israeli registrar

[Boaz Rymland]

Well well. Its seems like we are not even breaking grounds here. The 
trick's has been around for some time now.

Thanks for the links. Informative indeed.


Boaz.


Dotan Cohen wrote:

> 2009/4/17 Boaz Rymland <boaz at rymland.com>:
>   
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Consultation needed:
>>
>> A friend of mine and myself are volunteering to launch a charity web site.
>>
>> My friend is not proficient in web technologies so when he went to check for
>> registration of the domain, he followed the instructions recommended on one
>> of the Israeli registrars - internic.co.il and check through their website
>> the vacancy of the domain we wanted, with .co.il . It was as vacant as it
>> can be.
>>
>> The following day, he went to actually register the domain and guess what?
>> The domain was already registered(!)... .
>>
>> This smelled very fishy: the domain name was very unlikely to be requested
>> "by coincidence" at that exact timing; the person holding the domain was
>> some Israeli name with a very unreadable email address ending in some .info
>> domain (cannot quote the email address here - see PS section below).
>>
>> Now I have another friend who's deep into the hosting business and he
>> immediately told me that the owners of Internic.co.il are know to be doing
>> this very ugly move on whois queries running through their web site.
>>
>> My questions:
>>
>> * is that business method illegal?
>>
>> * what can be done here in order to react? (be the internic method legal or
>> not).
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Boaz.
>>
>> P.S.
>>
>> * luckily for us, after I talked to my friend we made it clear that the
>> needed domain should finish with a .org, not .co.il, so we actually weren't
>> hit by Internic sting. The incident was and still is, very irritating.
>>
>> * the .co.il domain was hijacked on March 24 (IIRC) but its now free - no
>> registration records exists for it so I cannot quote the snatcher details.
>> But, since Internic (or the people they're affiliated with) are making a
>> living in the described method, it should be rather easy to prove how they
>> work - its a little matter of persistence... .
>>
>>     
>
> Network Solutions is known to do this as well:
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/08/1920215
>
> Actually, it is not uncommon:
> http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/28/1458247
>
>   
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