Hijacked Again!
Earlier this year I might have mentioned that someone hijacked my Humboldt Shooter's Page domain, humboldtshooters.net. I got a call, yesterday, from someone in the Humboldt Taxpayer's League letting me know someone snagged the humboldttaxpayers.org domain, as well.
Boy, you snooze you lose. Doesn't seem to be any good way to keep track of five years gone by- five years is the term we bought that domain for. The guy was sitting right on top of it and, as soon as I let it expire, he snagged it.
I know these guys hijack domains to make money, but I can't figure out how they make money.
You pay money to get the domain. Then you'd have to hope the people whose domain you hijacked would be willing to pay big bucks to buy the domain back from you. I can't believe they actually make money from the links on the silly pages they direct the domain to.
What is it with these people and how are they making money?
As far as my Humboldt Shooters and Taxpayers League pages, they're still up on freeservers, the domain names just don't lead to them anymore. So, I had to go around and change the links with Humguide and everywhere else I had the pages listed.
Now I have to figure some way to remind myself to try and snag the domains back when the hijacker's term expires.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 7:12 AM
12 comments
12 Comments:
Hijacking a domain is when someone uses deceit to transfer ownership of a current domain to a new owner.
Registering expired domains isn't hijacking. It may be domain speculation, or purchasing for advertising purposes, but there is nothing nefarious about it.
There are plenty of registrars who will, for an extra fee, monitor domains for you and auto-grab ones you want when they expire. So yeah, let your registration lapse and you lose fast.
If anything, domain registrars are annoying for their incessant reminders to their customers to renew domains. If the contact information on a domain record is outdated, well, that's just, uh, the polite word would be unwise.
True, hijacking is probably the wrong word to use.
Interesting that the humboldtshooters.net domain shows a different person owning it after he took it.
humboldtaxpayers.org seems to still show me owning it, though. Any idea what went on there? Might he of just rerouted the domain name by some sort of hack job?
Here's some of the info I got:
Domain ID:D87869377-LROR
Domain Name:HUMBOLDTTAXPAYERS.ORG
Created On:25-Jun-2002 22:04:56 UTC
Last Updated On:26-Jun-2007 01:23:33 UTC
Expiration Date:25-Jun-2008 22:10:11 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:eNom, Inc. (R39-LROR)
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:65FAE14CA7757B32
Registrant Name:Humboldt Taxpayers League
Registrant Organization:Humboldt Taxpayers League
Registrant Street1:2135 E Street
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:Eureka
Registrant State/Province:CA
Registrant Postal Code:95501-3732
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.7044503702
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email:domain_Whois Privacy and Spam Prevention by DomainTools.com
Admin ID:8455423ADE8A7DBD
Admin Name:Fred Mangels
Admin Organization:Humboldt Taxpayers League
Admin Street1:2135 E Street
Admin Street2:
Admin Street3:
Admin City:Eureka
Admin State/Province:CA
Admin Postal Code:95501-3732
Admin Country:US
Admin Phone:+1.7074436568
Admin Phone Ext.:
Admin FAX:
Admin FAX Ext.:
Admin Email:domain_Whois Privacy and Spam Prevention by DomainTools.com
Tech ID:61194BB8E4534C2E
Tech Name:Tem Balanco
Tech Organization:OneDNR.com - #1 Domain Name
Tech Street1:1414 K Street, Suite #701
Tech Street2:
Tech Street3:
Tech City:Sacramento
Tech State/Province:CA
Tech Postal Code:95814
Could be the Taxpayer's League is making the change?? Judy has resigned and I know the phone number is being transferred along with P.O. Box, etc. Maybe that's what is going on with web site. I don't know if everyone knows you have the site - might ask President of HTL.
Your DNS server is under the "NAME-SERVICES.COM" domain. Check out WWW.NAME-SERVICES.COM. Think that page format looks just a bit similar to the one at humboldttaxpayers.org?
Maybe you haven't paid your hosting bill, and your domain traffic is being redirected. Or maybe it's a mix-up.
10:17 wrote, "might ask President of HTL.".
The Executive Director of the Taxpayer's League was the one who called me and told me the site was hijacked. He said they'd had similar problems with the Fortuna Chamber of Commerce web page.
11:05 wrote, "Maybe you haven't paid your hosting bill, and your domain traffic is being redirected. ".
My web pages are all hosted on freeservers.com and my bill is paid up. I wondered if somehow they hacked the people I bought the domain from and had the domain redirect to their server.
I just went to onedr.com- the people I bought the domain through- and tried redirecting that domain back to freeservers. We'll see if they tell me they couldn't do it and why.
This just in from onedr.com. Not quite sure what "in redemption" means, but I'm not paying $160. Maybe the Taxpayer's League may want to:
This domain has expired and is actually in redemption. You can take it out of redemption, but the fee is $160. You can also wait for it to become available and re-register it, but you may not guarantee that you can get it as there are systems out there that automatically register expired domains. Let us know how you'd like to proceed.
Who receives onedr.com's billing e-mails? That person should be asked why the domain was allowed to expire.
I do. Except I don't recall ever getting one before it expired. I've gotten e-mail notices from a bunch of other domain sellers to renew my domain when it was nowhere near ready to expire and I believe I might have got one from onedr before it expired last time.
I suppose onedr might have sent me one this last June and I missed it. No way of knowing for sure now.
"...there is nothing nefarious about it. "
This might be true if you do not believe in courtesy, honesty and integrity.
It is legal. This would be the best thing I could say about the practice.
Carson, in this day and age, I have as much sympathy for someone who lets their domain expire as I do a rube who sends his life savings to a Nigerian prince. If my cell phone company shuts off my service because I didn't pay my bill, I don't call it being hijacked. I call it non-payment of a bill. And I get charged extra to reactive my phone. Whoops, won't make that mistake again.
Keep your contact info current. If you can prove a registrar isn't notifying its customers of pending expirations, and then charging customers up the wazoo to save expired domains, then launch a class action lawsuit. But if Fred is just another guy who ignored the e-mail or didn't put his registrar on a whitelist and the e-mail got flagged as spam, well, you reap what you sow. If you need multiple reminders, choose a registar who will e-mail you several times and send you a paper reminder and beg, beg, beg you to put the domain on automatic renewal, taking your $10 from your credit card once a year. That's what mine does.
Again, if you do not believe in courtesy, honesty and integrity, then by all means, avail yourself of every possible advantage over others.
If the victim is weak, addled, or negligent, so much the better.
That Joel Mielke, all courtesy.
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