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Tell HN: Namecheap pre-purchasing searched domain names?

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Re: Tell HN: Namecheap pre-purchasing searched domain names?

#31

Post by elevation »

iamtoomas wrote: post #8

It has happened to me previously also using BOTH namecheap/godaddy, back then I just shrugged it off, but this time it really pissed me off... So I guess the best bet is to check for domains on the ACTUAL ENTITY PROVIDER who provides domain names to resellers, such as: https://www.verisign.com/en_US/domain-names/domain-name-sear... Plus their brainstorming feature is one of the best out there IMO.

Godaddy burned me in 2012. They registered a very low value domain (has bunch of digits in it) days after I searched it. They added it to their “Premium domain” service and wanted $250 for it. When I declined, they sold it to a HugeDomains who has held it for a $2500 ransom for a decade.

I eventually moved everything from godaddy to namecheap — I trusted them. But I’ve now had a similar experience there as well: a never-registered domain gets picked up by some Chinese entity within 24 hours of me using namecheap to check if it’s available. It took me years and hundreds of dollars to finally get that domain back.

My needs are stable for now but next domain purchase will likely be elsewhere.

Re: Tell HN: Namecheap pre-purchasing searched domain names?

#34

Post by throwaway843 »

thiht wrote: post #26

Having worked at a registrar, these claims always seem suspicious and highly unlikely to me for one good reason: big registrars get thousands (lowballing it) of domain checks every day. There is no way they would buy all the searched domains just to annoy you, it just would not be profitable. I’m also pretty sure front running is an explicit breach of the registry-registrar/ICANN agreements for all TLDs (maybe not fo…

Is tasting still a thing? That would be free, right?

Re: Tell HN: Namecheap pre-purchasing searched domain names?

#38

Post by Suppafly »

jrowley wrote: post #21

Namecheap CEO denies they are responsible, offering $50k to anyone who can prove they are behind it: > This is false, we do not monitor customer searches nor do we register domains that have been searched on our site. I've said this before and I'll say it again here, if anyone cares to prove that this actually exists and someone within our company is registering searched domain names I will give them a 50k reward on…

Namecheap has all the information they need to get to the bottom of it (ie they can see the actual person that registered it, instead of seeing that it's hidden), the fact that they haven't proves it's either them or someone they are working with.
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