GoDaddy Hijacked My Domain! GoDaddy Search Steals Domains

Well, hindsight is 20/20. I debated filing a complaint with ICANN, but I’ve got enough headaches already. In retrospect, the story is somewhat amusing. I hope this post helps at least one other person.

Here’s the story: it’s July 5th and I’m at a pool party with a bunch of people. Now I own a BUNCH of domains - not quite a ton - but a bunch. I’m in the pool with a guy who owns 5x more than me. He’s got more on his plate than he can handle. He says something to the effect of, “hey, I noticed there are a lot of people creating FaceBook profiles for their dogs. We should create a FaceBook.com for dogs.”

“Awesome idea!” I said. Admittedly, I don’t know much about FaceBook, but I do live with a bunch of dogs.

I’m up bright and early the next day and I start looking at domain names (yes, before doing any other research….) and I’m SEARCHING THE DOMAINS THROUGH GODADDY.COM domain search. I have hosting accounts with GoDaddy, 1and1, DigitalCityHosting, ENOM and DomainWong. And Yahoo (I always forget that one).

Anyway, I search “PawBook.com” through GoDaddy and it says it’s available. I mulled it over for about 30 seconds and decided to register it with my 1and1 account as I felt more comfortable installing ELGG into 1and1 than GoDaddy. I log into my 1and1 account, search the domain (and it’s available) and go through the registration process SUCCESSFULLY.

I then went on a jog contemplating how to go about setting up PawBook.com. I came back from a nice run and got all the normal emails about my new domain and the charges. I went to my control panel and it said it was setting it up.

To make a long story short - it got registered PRIVATELY (domains by proxy) via GoDaddy minutes before I SUCCESSFULLY registered it at 1and1.

Of course, after a little more due diligence, I found www.fuzzster.com (which I don’t like) and www.myDogSpace.com (which I do like) which are basically the same idea. In the long run, I would’ve abandoned the project anyway, but it still speaks volumes about GoDaddy. Needless to say, I’m phasing out my GoDaddy hosting and domains.

WiseMan Say, “Don’t GoDaddy.”