domain name hijacking

[cpr]

Warning...
If you think you own your domain name, better check. The letter below is about how properties.com was hijacked then sold for $60,000, but 3 weeks later stolen from the man that paid $60,000. He can get no response from afternic or regisiter.com. or his $60,000

Good Morning!

Do you know that Afternic.com seems to be selling stolen and hijacked domains at their domain auction?? Not only are they selling stolen domains on their auction, the evidence seems to be mounting that they may even be involved in the trafficking of those stolen domains because of their silence and foot dragging. This goes WAY beyond negligence as they have MANY questionable auctions and they seem to have no “Sense of urgency”. Worse, they are turning a blind eye.

There is nobody at Afternic.com to write to. They give nothing but form answers and meanwhile I have been swindled for $60,000 on the purchase of properties.com! Another buyer lost $5,000 when he bought a domain several weeks ago and there may be other stories as well. Plus there seems to be a deal in the works with novel.com also reported as a stolen domain.

My name is Rick Schwartz and I am perhaps the #1 buyer and developer of .com domains in the world. I own a total of 3500 domain names headquartered at http://www.erealestate.com. I buy them from individuals, companies, auctions like ebay, afternic, etc. So far I have spent in excess of $2 million obtaining these domains. My purchases include such notables as men.com, porno.com, ---.com, voyeur.com, tradeshows.com, bulkemail.com, dirtyjokes.com, widgets.com, homemade.com and most recently properties.com. That is where the story begins.

I won the properties.com domain at auction at Afternic.com, which is owned by Register.com. I thought I was getting a very good deal obtaining this domain for slightly over $60,000. I won the auction at Afternic, they processed the entire transaction from beginning to end. The auction started in mid February and ended on March 2nd. After all details were done and the $60,000+ payment was made, the properties.com domain was transferred to my name.

I tried to renew the domain for an extended period of time but there was some glitch and I started getting the run around at register.com. Then rumors began to fly that properties.com as well as reading.com, lend.com, novel.com, day.com, nuts.com and several others were all stolen domains and up for sale at Afternic.

The other day the domain was transferred out of my name to another party. (Presumably the original owner maybe a hijacker) I have been notified by NOBODY of ANYTHING to this very day. Just Afternic and their escrow company swindling me for $60,000. To add salt to the wound, their motto is “The only safe way to buy and sell domains”. For all intents and purposes I would compare what is going on there, as a “Chop shop for domains” and there are serious issues here that NEED to be looked into. Their turning a blind eye is criminal in my book! They made money on selling this and other stolen domains!!

I believe this to be the tip of an iceberg. The particular seller of these domains has auctions dating back to November 2000. So I have no idea how many other stolen domains have been auctioned off. I am also a victim of a stolen domain, olmeda.com which has yet to be returned to me even though I have documented proof that some fraud must have occurred. The scary fact of the matter is there is a HUGE security hole in the system and it is allowing domains to be stolen and hijacked every day. Unless you are Microsoft…..you are all but screwed because there is NOBODY to report this crime to.

I understand that these are serious accusations made about a public company. I urge you to see just how accurate my story is. I am sure you will want some clarification on certain things. I can be reached at mr800king@aol.com or if you prefer, I can call or be called. In addition you can contact my attorney, Howard Neu at howard@neulaw.com.

Thanks for your time!!

Regards,

Rick Schwartz

Domain King
/////////////////////////
these links are to a discussion on the afternic board

http://www.afternic.com/index.cfm?a=members&sa=thread&ForumID=1005&TID=35534

http://www.afternic.com/index.cfm?a=members&sa=thread&ForumID=1001&TID=35535
fyi

[Rodie]

I'm not in favor of domain hijackers by any means, but I'm not gonna lose much sleep over some corporate domain squatter getting his --- screwed. It's actually kind of funny, just hope it doesn't happen to anybody else that doesn't deserve it.

[}:8) Supermoo]

I don't get it. What Happened?

[cpr]

Supermoo - essentially what happened (& it is very confusing) person 'X' owned properties.com. Person 'Y' was somehow able to hijack properties.com & got it into their name, (at least tempoarily) & quickly sold it to Rick Schwartz for $60,000. 3 weeks later the whois data showed it was no longer his because 'X' took it back. Meanwhile Afternic performed the auction & escrow service selling a name for someone that didn't own it & apparently got their commission- & Register.com allowed the transfer of the name from 'X' to 'Y'. Afternic is owned by Register.com. Afternic will not respond to Rick's emails nor has he gotten his $$$ back. The whole thing has gotten even more confusing...
Scarry thing is, how can Afternic claim to be a secure escrow service yet sell a stolen name & just be allowed to back out of the picture & how can register.com allow the illegal transfer of a name?
hope that makes it clearer
Candy

[cpr]

Rodie
'corporate domain squatter'!? - Rick Schwartz is far from a corporation - he is a single individual - also not a domain squatter as the majority of his sites are active.

Sorry you think it is humor in someone elses problems, cause if it can happen to him, it can happen to you. The battle he is undertaking can greatly affect the little guy on the net & his or her protection from theft. This is only one of the things he is doing to help the 'little guy' get on his feet.

Sounds like you resent someone who has used their brain since 1995 who work their butt of without handouts to make a lot of $$$ on the net. Watchout for that 'what goes around, comes around' thing -

[Rodie]

It couldn't happen to me. My domain names aren't good enough :0

[GordonH]

Hello
We have domain thefts all the time.

How it works is:
Customer wants a free domain name.
Customer orders domain name and pays $13.
Customer gets credit card company to chargeback the registration fee.
Customer gets refund but meanwhile has changed the opensrs passwords so gets to keep the domain.

There is nothing we can do about it because the credit card issuers do chargebacks for online transactions far too easily.

If you plan on doing this it helps if you live in a country with no law enforcement (Thailand and Indonesia seem popular).

Last months Hijackings cost us $700.

We no longer accept orders from quite a range of countries (on our banks advice)


Of course, the down side for the thief is they can't renew the domain unless they move it to another registrar.


( somebody, pass me more Valium.......)

Gordon

[Rodie]

Originally posted by GordonH
Hello
We have domain thefts all the time.

How it works is:
Customer wants a free domain name.
Customer orders domain name and pays $13.
Customer gets credit card company to chargeback the registration fee.
Customer gets refund but meanwhile has changed the opensrs passwords so gets to keep the domain.

There is nothing we can do about it because the credit card issuers do chargebacks for online transactions far too easily.

If you plan on doing this it helps if you live in a country with no law enforcement (Thailand and Indonesia seem popular).

Last months Hijackings cost us $700.

We no longer accept orders from quite a range of countries (on our banks advice)


Of course, the down side for the thief is they can't renew the domain unless they move it to another registrar.


( somebody, pass me more Valium.......)

Gordon


That really sucks for everyone involved. The registrars lose money, and even more domain names get taken away from potential customers. As standard and secure we like to think the internet is, there seems to be so many things weird and un-settled about e-commerce in general. This is a great example.

And a few weeks ago, I heard of a glitch in a lot of online stores where the consumer could download the html page they saw right before they finalized their purchase, and hack it up to make the price cheaper. Apparently the price was just a value set in a hidden form tag, and the company didn't bother to use any http referer value to block out form submissions from remote sites.

[LeX]

That's scary... good for the customers, bad for the dealers (companies).