Safeguard to Prevent a Domain Theft

I was   speaking with a friend at DomainFest yesterday afternoon, and he had just learned a few of his domain names were stolen from his Moniker account. A friend of his saw these stolen names for sale on DN Forum, and fortunately for him, the domain names were quickly returned to his account once Moniker was notified.

One thing my friend mentioned was that he never received an email from Moniker informing him of the account change. With Moniker, I believe the customer doing the transfer has the option to have an email confirmation sent or not once the account change has been completed.

As a safety precaution, I think Moniker (and all registrars) should make these confirmation emails mandatory. They should automatically send the transferor and transferee a confirmation notice upon account change. Had my friend not been told about the thread on DN Forum, his names may have been transferred to a different registrar, and that would have made them more difficult to recover.

Kudos to Moniker for taking quick action on this. Having a responsive account representative like Bari is one of the primary reasons I am a happy customer.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

12 COMMENTS

  1. When I got interested in creating a site on the internet a couple years ago, most of the books and people I talked to recommended GoDaddy. In my experience it is the best, second to none. They send me email to inform me of every changes that I made to my account.

    When I place some pre-order for .co, they informed me every steps of the way…which ones they were able to register, which was not, hence a refund. I tried to pre-order with some others (won’t name names)…never heard a beep from them.

    The few pro domainers I followed, you and domainnamewire, use Moniker. Although, I don’t remember neither one had ever recommended Moniker. But, the fact that you use them seem to imply an endorsement. As newbie, we try to imulate the pro..sometime, we get in trouble doing so I guess.

    I don’t know for a fact, but when you have a couple thousands of domains and a company offer you low renewal cost and other perks, it can get pretty compelling to stick around. Unfortunately, newbies like me don’t know that. 😉

  2. I have had a good experience with Godaddy in this regard. Every time I make a nameserver change I get an email from them. When I have sold a domain and unlock the domain, I get an email. After the transfer has gone through I get another. Some domains I monitor in case they drop, got lucky and registered them on the drop and have forgotten to remove the monitoring. When I renew I get another email. I also monitor the registration of my high-end domains in the event someone hacks my account.

  3. Were the stolen domains transferred out of Moniker or pushed to another Moniker account?

    I hope Moniker takes your advice and starts email notification for
    all account changes.

  4. The timing of that sale (kidnap.com) was odd as it coincided with DomainFest. I called NamePursuit.com’s phone number hoping to get a person but the answering machine came up. It’s interesting that the seller of kidnap.com is now shifting the blame onto someone else on a Russian domain forum where he allegedly bought it for $200. And that’s the problem with stolen domains, they get recycled two-three times and then they are “baptized” as legit. OXI.com is one such case.

  5. Hi Everyone,

    The “my friend” that Elliot is referring to happens to be me.

    I’m sitting at a Domainfest auction checking my email and see an old friend emailing me letting me know that my domain name kidnap.com is for sale at dnforum. At that point my heart started to pump hard as I’m checking the whois to see that I’m not the owner anymore. The one thing I was able to see that the domain is still with moniker, which means a lot.
    Right there at the auction I notify Bari, who mind you is on stage handling the live auction. While being on stage Bari was able to notify Howard Kopp who took complete control and put a lock down on all 10 domains that were hijacked.

    First off I’m grateful to my friend Jody who notified me via email letting me know of the theft……http://www.dnforum.com/f26/kidnap-com-thread-429112.html

    Second, imagine I wasn’t notified of the theft and the domains are at a different registrar, I can only imagine what i would have to go through to get my domains back. I was so relived that all 10 were still with moniker and both Bari and Howard assured me that I will regain control of my domains.

    Third, thanks to Elliot for blogging about this and domainers need to take precaution with their investments. I agree with Elliot that registrars need to make it mandatory for the owner of the domain to receive a notification of any change to our accounts. I wasn’t notified that my domains were pushed and if it hadn’t been for my friend Jody, I would of have been in deep shit.

    @Acro – Thanks for trying to get a hold of me, as you can see I was at domainfest and wasn’t paying attention to my cell. Thanks again for trying, we should all take lessons from people like Jody and Acro for trying to do the right thing.

    Great post Elliot.

  6. How did it get “pushed” to another account?

    I’m sorry for Bari having to deal with something like this – it can’t be good for moral.

  7. Thank God for blogs like this and the dnForum linked to above! The domain people and tech people have just enough on the ball to call criminals to task for their sneaky methods.

    I like Symantec and HostExploit for calling Registrars to task for sheltering criminals after domains are named for selling fake pharmaceuticals: eNom being the outstanding example! Registrars assert their perceived entitlement that anything goes as long as they make $$, they can’t be called to task for anything, even if it violate the RAA! They’re ruining the internet. At least freedom of speech calls them out on it.

  8. @ Steve – congrats on your save of domains. I just wanted to say, your story ought to go down the hall of fame for unique twist of events and amazing domain save.

    “My phone vibrated in my pocket cause I got a message, I wanted to ignore it cause I was bidding at other names that weren’t stolen. The message said ‘your names are stolen bro -love Jody’ so I jumped out of my seat, pounded my chest like a gorilla, jumped on to the stage where my account rep (of the registrar the domains were at) happened to be sitting and he helped me recover my domains with in 10 minutes”

    Now if that isn’t a good slap in the face to the hacker who stole the domains, then I don’t know what is…

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