InDomaining

Are all of the domain names registered in your name.. yours?

Up until last week, I thought so too!

I’m getting ready to move, so I was doing a little local real estate research online.   I typed my own address into the search bar to see if I could find other locally listed property values.   Instead, I found a couple of domain names that were registered using my information.

I often come across indexed whois pages for some of my domain names, but I usually recognize them right away.  I knew something was fishy when my first and last name, address, phone number and former business name appeared in the whois of a domain name that I never registered.

Right after I found the first domain name, I looked for others and found one more… I started to become frantic, but I kept it together and sent an email to the registrar where the domain names were registered.  Just a few minutes later I received a call from the registrar.   Of course, I was upset that I had become a victim of identity theft, so I’m glad Scott at Name.com was patient with me as I did a little flipping out.  I especially flipped out when I found out this individual registered 113 domain names using my info!!!!

I was assured that Name.com was taking the issue very seriously, and in fact, they did.  Within a few days, the domain names were taken out of my name,  out of the account, and the account holder blacklisted.

Don’t get me wrong, I am happy that this identity thief lost their domain names… but I feel like maybe something more should be done.  As far as I’m concerned a crime has taken place.  I was really worried for a few days that this person might attempt to do business as me.  It scares me how easy it was for someone to use all of my information… and that I found out about it by accident.

I don’t know if there’s a way to prevent something like this from happening… but I’d recommend anyone with a portfolio of domain names do some general research to be sure all of the domain names registered in your name are, in fact, yours.

If you have a DomainTools.com account, once you verify your email address you can pull a free report.  The one I pulled had a lot of domain names that I no longer owned on there, and not all of the ones I did.  I did, however, find another domain name that I didn’t register using my info as the admin and technical.

Give yourself a checkup… and if you have any tips to share, please don’t hesitate.

Domain industry has a lot of different domain conferences these days.

So far together we have already seen a couple dozen shows successfully staged by these various conferences.

The single biggest challenge facing the domainers in the past few years is the proper monetization and development of their assets to make profitable the domains that do not have much natural traffic. So many domain conferences boast about introducing technologies and companies that will provide the much needed solutions.

But conference after conference just fails to provide an effective monetization method to domainers. Most of these shows actually concentrate on selling domaines among and to domainers.

Many domainers are starting to feel that most of these conferences are just hype and perhaps just cash cows and free publicity for their organizers.

So far no one has come even close to introducing a proper domain monetization method or company.

Do you believe that domain conferences are a waste of time and money for domainers looking for effective domain monetization methods?

If you have benefited from attending these shows, please let others know about your experience.

I am very keenly interested in your opinions.

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