Sticky Web Domains

There’s a frightening new batch of scams going around now that can damage your reputation as domain “squatters” steal your domain name.

There are a number of ways the “game” is played. The first is entirely legal, if more than a little questionable. In this version, the name of a city or geographic area is grabbed by a domain squatter and pointed to… “sites that you wouldn’t want your children visiting.”

(We chose that term to avoid getting caught in a lot of spam filters for the use of the word “p-o-rn.”)

A prominent notice is placed on the sites, offering them for sale at prices that range from $2500 to as much as $500,000!

The idea here is that city officials will feel that enough damage is being done to the reputations of their towns that they’ll pay to keep them from being associated with that type of material.

It’s obviously safe to say that it’s not appropriate to pop those kinds of images into people’s faces while they’re looking for info on a completely different topic.

That’s where the pressure on the cities comes from, and why this is such a disgusting scheme.

In essence, the domain squatter says: “Pay us, or continue to watch as your city’s reputation suffers.”

Many would call this blackmail…

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The second variation on the theme is not always legal. When someone takes a trademarked name (or variation of the spelling of one) or a famous person’s name, and does the same thing.

For trademarks or close variations, there’s a specific procedure for addressing the problem. (See the resource section at the end of this issue.)

For the names of famous people, there MAY be a remedy. But, it can be tricky — and expensive.

For example, if someone named John Jones registered http://WalterCronkite.com and pointed it to one of “those” sites, Walter Cronkite could probably force the domain away from him.

However, if someone named Steve Cronkite registered http://Cronkite.com and did the same thing, Walter Cronkite would have no recourse. It would be very hard to demonstrate that Steve registered the domain in bad faith. And if Steve’s son’s name is Walter, the same is true for http://WalterCronkite.com.

If you feel that your name is likely to be typed into a browser when people are looking for information on you, you should consider getting both the .com and .net versions of the domain if they’re available.

It will cost you a few bucks to prevent the problem. Fixing it, assuming you win, will cost you hundreds — if not thousands — of dollars.

And there’s no guarantee you’ll win.

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A third version is a bit more benign. It’s common among members of affiliate programs.

In this version names very close to, or even including, the trademark are registered. The sites are created to drive traffic to the affiliates’ URL at the main site.

This may or may not be acceptable to the affiliate program owner. If it is, it’s a good technique for getting traffic. If not, it could get you into hot water. Check with the owner of the trademark before doing this.

Less benign is an alternative version of this technique where someone grabs domain names that are close to the trademark of a competitor and uses them to grab competitor type-in traffic. This is often done by finding out the most common misspellings of the real domain name or trademark.

Watch for people doing this with your domain.

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Here’s the worst version of this — and it can hit anyone if they have enough traffic and don’t pay close attention to when their domain registrations expire.

In this situation, someone grabs expired domain names and points them to “those” kinds of sites. This is a “no lose” for the hijacker, as they will profit from the traffic even if the previous owner doesn’t pay the requested ransom for the domain.

The more traffic the URL gets, the greater the clickthrough value to the hijacker. This means more potential damage to the original owner — and a higher ransom to get it back.

In effect, your own popularity is your worst enemy in this case.

The solution to this one is simple — and very important: Don’t let your domain names expire!

Useful Resources:
If you find yourself a victim of domain hijacking, there is hope for correcting the problem.

For a more formal explanation of the legal aspects of this problem, visit
http://www.llrx.com/congress/100200.htm

For specific information on the UDRP (Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy), the procedure for taking domain names that are being used in violation of a trademark, see
http://wipo2.wipo.int/process1/index.html

For information on taking action under the Anti-Cybersquatting Act (A US law that provides for damages in addition to the less severe penalties of the UDRP) see
http://www.domain-name.org/cybersquatact.htm

If you have a famous name or trademark, the best defense is to make sure that you register the main variations in both the .com and .net form. The .org is probably only necessary if you are heavily involved with charitable activities.

Protect yourself. Scammers come up with new schemes all the time…

So, keep your eyes open.

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I didn’t believe this either, but… I’ve gotten a number of letters from companies who say they will “only” charge $1,000 to register our domain name! Unfortunately, some innocent people have accepted this ridiculous offer.

Clearly, this is a complete rip-off. And we’ve received even more offers to register domain names for “just” $300!

OK. So what should it cost to register a domain name? The short answer is that it should cost you between $15 and $75 (plus a fee to InterNIC – see below). Anything more is a rip-off.

Here’s why: There are two types of fees to register a domain name:

A fee to InterNIC (Internet Network Information Center — the group in charge of assigning domain names) and

A fee to the company doing the domain name registration for you.

1. InterNIC is in charge of registering domain names. Until September of this year (1995), there was no charge from InterNIC to register domain names. Therefore, if you knew how to fill out the appropriate form and submit it to InterNIC, you could register a domain name for free.

Prior to the registration fees from InterNIC, some people registered huge numbers of domain names. For example, there were individuals who tried to register the names of as many major corporations as they could, so they could later sell these domain names to these companies (when the companies realized that “their” domain names were not available).

On September 14, 1995, InterNIC announced that the fee for all new domain name registrations would be $100, which would include two years of registration. So, all new domain name registrations now cost a minimum of $100, the fee to InterNIC. (Update: The fee for Web Addresses registered on or after April 1, 1998, is US$70.00. New registrations are in effect for a two-year period.)

The fee for annual renewals (for both new and existing domains) is $50. Therefore, all domain names that were registered prior to September 14, 1995 (when the $100 registration fee was initiated) will owe an annual renewal fee of $50 on the anniversary of their initial registration. (Update: All domain names re-registered on or after April 1, 1998, are assessed a US$35.00 re-registration fee.)

On the Web: For more information, the Web address for InterNIC Registration Services is http://rs.internic.net/rs-internic.html. (Update: Network Solutions now handles the registration services: http://www.networksolutions.com/ )

2. Many people hire their ISP (Internet Service Provider) or a consultant to register their domain names for them.

The process of registering a domain name almost always involves these five steps:

Selecting a domain name to register
Finding out if this domain name is currently available
Selecting an ISP who will host the domain
Filling out the appropriate form to request the domain name (done by you or the ISP)
Submitting this form to InterNIC (done by the ISP).
A Useful Tip: It is now possible to use the Web to find out whether or not the domain name you’d like to register is available using WhoIs. This is a LOT more convenient than alternative ways to find out whether or not a domain name is available. But remember, the name may be assigned to someone else between when your application is submitted and when it is reviewed by InterNIC.

On the Web: Look at example information along with the instructions that are included as part of the Domain Name Registration Agreement to request a new domain name. Filling out and submitting the form is not difficult (however, it does require knowing what you’re doing).

A reasonable fee to pay to have your ISP (or a consultant) fill out and submit this form for you is between $15 and $75. Our ISP charges us $30 and does an excellent job. Paying much more for this is unnecessary.

This means that you will pay a total of $115 to $175 (including the $100 to InterNIC) to register your domain name. (at the time of original publication)

Note: This scam is about consultants who charge $2000 for ONLY registering a domain name. If your ISP starts talking about fees of $2000, they are probably giving you more domain services than you need. (The service most of you will want from your ISP is sometimes called a “domain alias,” and can be implemented for the prices we mentioned.)

Tip: Don’t worry if you’re not the technical or administrative contact (Questions 4 and 5 on the form) — that’s OK. Just be sure that Questions 3a to 3f are filled in with your company’s name and info. That way, you’ll own the domain name, not your ISP or consultant.

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What is an IDN?

IDN stands for Internationalized Domain Name, also known as multilingual domain names. It allows you the possibility to use more characters in domains names, besides letters and numbers. It uses characters available in other alphabets, like accents.

Example of IDN domains:

Chinese IDN ? ??.com which means cancer
If you go to ??.com you will see the domain is targeted towards cancer but in English.

Romanian IDN ? divor?.com you will see the domain is targeted towards divorce but in English.

Polish IDN ? pieni?dz.com you will see the domain is targeted towards money/currency but in English.

Greek IDN ? ??????.com you will see the domain is targeted bible/books but in English.

.cn with Chinese results: ??.cn you will see the domain is samples but in Chinese.

Al these are targeted through http://parkingsite.com and take 5 days to target once a keyword is given.

What browsers support IDN names today?

Only the latest version of Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 support IDN Names directly entered into the browser.

IE6 and earlier versions will not support IDN?s.

What TLD?s or ccTLD?s support IDN?

First of all what I am saying with that question is what extensions can be registered like and IDN. Can I register??.com? ??.net? ??.org? ??.cn? ??.jp? and what others can I register.

Here is a list of the ones that I have registered:

.com
.net
.tv
.cc
.jp = Japan
.cn = China
.de = Germany
.gr = Greece
.tw = Taiwan

Do all Registrars support IDN registrations?

No, as of writing this Enom does and so does Domainsite. There are others that do but mot d not. Please check with your registrar BEFORE you register any or you will get stuck with a long name that has no value whosoever.

What IDN?s should you register?

You should use the same principles that you have learnt while registering English domain names. Go after the higher paying ppc terms first. Make sure if there are more than one way to say a word in any language that you get them all as you never know which ones will have the most traffic. I have registered quite a few dual meaning words and it?s never the one I think that has the most traffic.

??? ; ?? ; ??? all mean girl with slight variations in Chinese. In this case and such a major term, unless you speak the language, grab them all.

Google results for all of them:
??? – 1,870,000 results in Google
?? – 4,460,000 results in Google
??? – 2,840,000 results in Google

Most IDN?s with Google over 1 million will have some traffic unless you get ridiculous generic terms like ?the? which have no value whatsoever.

Also, as with English domains, dig a bit deeper. If loans is taken in the language you want go for things like home loans, car loans, boat loans and so on.

How to find and register IDN?s?

There are many ways to find and register IDN domain names. The best way is obviously if you speak the language but even then you must be careful. Just like in English some common words will not actually be used and a short form may be used. In English most people know the word automobile but rarely would use it. Most would use the word car.

This can be illustrated by the two overture scores:

1572 http://automobile.com

18016 http://car.com

Now this does not mean automobile is not a good IDN to register, it just means go after the one that is more likely to be typed in a browser.

Now if you don?t know anyone that speaks a language you are going after, your only choice is to use a good translator software, I suggest you use logos.it

When you enter a word it gives you results in multiple languages at one time and makes it really easy to get a keyword in multiple languages.

For example when you search for the word insurance you get:

English
insurance

Italian
assicurazione

Spanish
seguro ; aseguración

French
assurance

German
Versicherung

Russian
c??????????

Arabic
????? ; ???? ; ?????

Albanian
sigurim

Asturian
seguru

Basque
aseguru

Bolognese
asicuraziån

Brazilian Portuguese
seguro

Breton
asurañs

Catalan
assegurança

Danish
forsikring

Dutch
verzekering

Esperanto
certigo

Finnish
vakuutus

Flemish
verzekering

Furlan
sigurance

Galician
seguro

Gujarati
????

Hebrew
?????

Hindi
????

Hungarian
biztosítás

Indonesian
asuransi

Irish
árachas

Japanese
??

Marathi
????

Norwegian
forsikring

Piemontese
assicurassion

Polish
ubezpieczenie

Portuguese
seguro

Punjabi
????
Romagnolo
assicuraziòun

Romanian
asigurare

Sanskrit
?????????

Serbian
?????????

Slovak
poistenie

Swedish
försäkring

Turkish
sigorta ; sigortalama

Ukrainian
???????????

Valencian
segur

Venetian
assicurassion

Welsh
yswiriant

I have found that just like domains, the one I think will get the most traffic, surprisingly won?t, but the languages I have never heard of get some traffic.

Now let?s see how you go about registering IDN names:

Let?s go to logos.it and look up the Russian word for weasel as an example which is ?????, so now I go download the IDN Domain Conversion Tool then open it up and paste ????? into the space unde the heading IDN Domains and hit the ok button. You will get a code called a PUNY code which is: xn--80aa3ac5a , then take that and add a .com on it and you will end up with this http://xn--80aa3ac5a.com. Now check a whois or try to register http://xn--80aa3ac5a.com and see if you get it. To keep it organized and try to keep my domains in one place I register most of my IDN?s at Enom. There are other choices if you like. You can take the actual ID code and go to and type in the IDN and it will tell you if it?s available without doing the PUNY conversion but you should know how to do it anyways.

When I check now ?????.com is available.
In case you are wondering you cannot register ?????.ru yet as the Russian ccTLD does not support public IDN registrations yet.

If I find an IDN like ????? (xn--f9b5b1c6b7k) should I register .com or .cn or both?

This really depends on how strong the term is, if it?s a great term and you have the $, by all mans register them both. If you don?t my suggestion is get the .com. You will need to do some research here as every country operates differently. Some countries are big on their ccTLD?s while others go for the .com first and only if that?s taken will grab their ccTLD after that.

Personally, I have been registering the .com?s and if it?s a great term I get the ccTLD for that country if its available.

To learn more about IDN Names visit the Domain Name Forum where all the domain experts hang out and chat.

Are all the good IDN names taken?

Absolutely not, take your time and do some mining and you will find gold in them mountains.

Remember don?t expect miracles from IDN domains now, the miracles will come once most of the world has a browser that can support it.

Should you expect to make $ from your IDN?s now?

No, if you are lucky you will have a few that make something., I have registered thousands of these and at least half have traffic so that?s good enough for me to know the future will be great for these. Be patient they will be worth it in the long run.

Is there anything else I should know about IDN?s?

Yes, there is lots more, please take the time to learn about Domain Names and feel free to ask and post your questions as thre are many IDN experts there and they will usually answer you within a few minutes.

I hope this helps some of you get started in what should be an interesting area of domains

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