[RESOLVED] - Domain Name Stolen...A Horrible Story and a Warning...

[Dustie]

Hi All. I've not been in here for a number of years, but a week ago I had my domain of 20 years (dustie.com) stolen and I have to tell the story. it looks like I'm out of luck here, and out a lot of money, but maybe my story can help prevent this happening to someone else. This happened at Godaddy, though I don't blame them, and i still have all of my domains with them, as well as my websites. I blame the no good slimy thief who stole my domain name!

Here's the story... First off, my name is Dustie, and I've owned Dustie.com since 1998.
Sometime in 2017 (I think) I decided to go ahead and list dustie.com as a premium domain for a high price. It being my name, I wasn't real keen on selling it, but, as they say, everything is for sale for the right price. I'd had someone offer me 5,000.00 for it, but after taxes (it would have put me in a higher tax bracket for the year) and commisison, it wasn't worth it wasn't worth it to sell it for that amount. However, I figured that if someone were willing to pay that for it, maybe someone would pay even more. So I listed it as a premium domain for 20,000.00. I seriously didn't think it would sell but it woudn't hurt to list it (or so I thought).

All was well, until a bit over a week ago. I had been out that evening and didn't get home till nearly 10:00 PM. It was 11:00 before I was able to get onto the computer. That's when I saw the 5 emails from Godaddy.... I'm sure you can imaging my reaction when I saw that, within 20 minutes, my domain name, dustie.com, which I have owned since 1998, sold and transferred for a mere 450.00? I was sick...simply sick. How could this happen! First off, I've never had a domain name sell and transfer inside of 21 minutes and then be paid for it a little over a day and a half later. That's unheard of!

Immediately after reading those 5 emails and realizing my domain name had sold for less then 5% of what I'd had it listed for on Premium Domains, I was online with Godaddy help. Though they were sympathetic, no one there could help. They said I'd have to wait till morning and call auctions help. Needless to say, I didn't sleep well and was on the phone as soon as they opened their office. Though I was on the phone for a good 30 or so minutes with them (a good part of that time on hold), I was ultimately told there was nothing they could do for me. My domain was bought, paid for, and transferred and that was that! (Oh, and this even though they found the price had been tampered with twice that same night, long before I got online). They said this had to be me because no one else had access to that account! That was proof to me that someone was in there messing with my account and screwed me over big time, but not to them.

So I've been sick all week...trying to forget that someone illegally reached into my pocket and stole a lot of money , as well as my NAME! Needless to say, even a week later, I'm just sick about the whole thing.

Today, on a lark I looked up dustie.com on godaddy and was sick all over again when I saw that it is now listed as a premium domain for 12,000.00 (by the person who stole it from me?). That's just wrong, in so many ways! How do I get over this? I want to know how this could have happened!!??

I am posting in here as a warning to you all, as well as wanting to go on record that this did happen, regardless that the guy at [email protected] said that dustie.com had always been listed at 450.00 and it was a legitimate sale! I know how to use GoDaddy. I'm a long time user and have over 50 domain names with GoDaddy, more the half listed as premium domains! Ever since Dustie.com was originally listed as a premium domain at 20,000.00 that was the price that showed up whenever I went to maintain my premium listings. It always stuck out like a sore thumb, because most my other domain names are listed below 1000.00. There is simply no way Dustie.com was ever listed for as little as 450.00. Even go daddy suggested a price of nearly $5,000 as a premium listing starting point for dustie.com.

Without a doubt, my godaddy account was hacked and my domain name of 20 years stolen from me and relisted for 27 times what they paid for it! That burns me to the core!!!

I'm sure that, since this happened to me it will surely happen again. If any of you hear about such a thing, could you please have them get in touch with me? If I can find others that this has happened to, maybe we can do something as a group?

In the meantime, if you have a valuable domain name on Godaddy Premium domains, then you might want to take screen shots of the listed prices. Also, I was told that if I had the original email when it was listed that would be proof that it was listed at 20,000.00. Alas, I did not have it...I had, not long ago, deleted emails that were more then a year and a half old. If you don't have emails for your most valuable domain names, then remove them from listing, then relist them to get a new email and save those emails just in case!!

And Thanks for listening to my very long rant!

Dustie
(was [email protected] for over 20 years...now I am [email protected] and my site is dustie.art ... cool name, but it's certainly not worth what I lost in dustie.com!)

 

[Recons.Com]

While what @MapleDots doing is really noble and @maxtra also has demonstrated willingness to resolve the situation, which also is wonderful and makes me love this community even more, I personally see the optimal solution as this:

1. MapleDots doesn't get hit with any cost.
2. Dustie does incur a reasonable cost to return his name and pays $450 plus another $450 or so to compensate for Maxtra's time and effort. This would be a reasonable cost for a valuable lesson learned.

 

[carob]

@Joe Styler

While, hopefully, this is resolved, it got me really worried. Afternic doesn't have 2 step auth and basically invites a big scandal when someone hacks into accounts and puts low bins on valuable names and then immediately purchases via fast transfer and moves to another registrar.

And Afternic won't even notify when prices are changed.

Why not to implement asap such an important security feature?

There have been multiple requests for 2FA at Afternic going back more than two years, for example:

https://www.namepros.com/threads/pr...ic-report-problems-here.1006373/#post-6046450 where Joe Styler said in early 2017:

On 2fa we dont have any immediate plans to offer it, can look into it.

My reply to that was:

Thanks Joe, you really need the 2FA.

Because you need it.

Because Afternic only accept alphanumeric passwords.

And because a hacker can simply change the price of a domain to $20.00 and buy it and if it is fast-transfer it is gone at once.

And because by default Afternic exposes usernames and a juicy list of associated Afternic-listed names for each user, at an easily findable url pattern afternic.com/username. Users may not realise that is happening and the setting to disable it is mis-labeled so not easy to recognise. Just a gift to hackers.

Sedo used to do that public username thing, then they changed it so the username does NOT show a list of domains and if you want you can choose to generate a unique and possibly private url to share a list of the domains you have listed on Sedo.

 

[Dustie]

Matrix, if GD reversed the sale, then would you take the 450.00 you paid back and refund MapleDot their 5,000? If that be the case, I'm willing to try to work with GD to reverse the sale for a little while anyway. I would love to see everyone made whole here.

Kam, the pricing history had to have been changed. It definitely was listed for 20,000.00. Everytime I went into my domain names, 20,000.00 was popping out at me. All my other premium domains were listed with a lot less numbers so this one was very prominent and it always made wonder what I'd do if it actually sold for that. Then I had this tech guy at auctions telling me that my domain shows that it has always been listed for 450.00??? I told him that if that's what it's saying then someone or something has changed the pricing history. He, in no uncertain terms, told me that was just not possible. But it was possible...because it happened! He told me that if I had the original email from when it was first listed at 20,000.00 then they could prove it. I searched and searched my emails, all my folders, everything... sadly I had deleted old emails awhile back, and that email was nowhere to be found. That's when I realized, with no proof, I was unlikely to ever get my domain name back
.

 

[xynames]

Since I can not push I have offered to refund @MapleDots the full amount if he wants it back.

Obviously! but that doesn’t solve anything just leaves the domain back for sale by you to the next highest bidder.

Anyway you maxtra seem to have made it clear that you won’t voluntarily return the domain to Dustie. Not much more may be said, to you, until/unless you decide to do something different from keeping on with trying to sell the domain.

I’m not judging. Something like this happened with me. But in my case I got control of several domains that people let expire and kept messaging the prior owners for years. Years! Finally after a few years of no response I sold the domains. Only then did a couple of the owners come out of the woodwork. One kept accusing me of theft and said he deliberately ignored all my messages (and consciously left me to pay the maintenance fees each year for years). That guy I did not and could not help. The other was willing to work with me was polite and reasonable and we got the domain back to him.

 

[Recons.Com]

Someone will sue Afternic/GD and this thread and the other referenced will be a proof that GD/AN was aware of the security issue and never took relatively simple measures to prevent it.

It could potentially happen at mass scale as well. If a group of hackers would line up accounts with valuable names and act within a day to pay for the names and move them away. Potential costs for AN/GD could be huge.

 

[equity78]

GoDaddy can easily solve this, @Joe Styler @Paul Nicks Will you reverse the transaction and give @Dustie their name back and Maxtra their $450?

 

[Recons.Com]

Matrix, if GD reversed the sale, then would you take the 450.00 you paid back and refund MapleDot their 5,000? If that be the case, I'm willing to try to work with GD to reverse the sale for a little while anyway. I would love to see everyone made whole here.

Kam, the pricing history had to have been changed. It definitely was listed for 20,000.00. Everytime I went into my domain names, 20,000.00 was popping out at me. All my other premium domains were listed with a lot less numbers so this one was very prominent and it always made wonder what I'd do if it actually sold for that. Then I had this tech guy at auctions telling me that my domain shows that it has always been listed for 450.00??? I told him that if that's what it's saying then someone or something has changed the pricing history. He, in no uncertain terms, told me that was just not possible. But it was possible...because it happened! He told me that if I had the original email from when it was first listed at 20,000.00 then they could prove it. I searched and searched my emails, all my folders, everything... sadly I had deleted old emails awhile back, and that email was nowhere to be found.

I don't believe GD would reverse the sale without you being able to prove somehow that the pricing was their glitch or something similar and even then the name might be out of their control.

Instead, you should work out with Maxtra a reasonable compensation for his time and effort and just pay for the name to get it back and don't put any bin price on it.

 

[carob]

Matrix, if GD reversed the sale, then would you take the 450.00 you paid back and refund MapleDot their 5,000? If that be the case, I'm willing to try to work with GD to reverse the sale for a little while anyway. I would love to see everyone made whole here.

Kam, the pricing history had to have been changed. It definitely was listed for 20,000.00. Everytime I went into my domain names, 20,000.00 was popping out at me. All my other premium domains were listed with a lot less numbers so this one was very prominent and it always made wonder what I'd do if it actually sold for that. Then I had this tech guy at auctions telling me that my domain shows that it has always been listed for 450.00??? I told him that if that's what it's saying then someone or something has changed the pricing history. He, in no uncertain terms, told me that was just not possible. But it was possible...because it happened! He told me that if I had the original email from when it was first listed at 20,000.00 then they could prove it. I searched and searched my emails, all my folders, everything... sadly I had deleted old emails awhile back, and that email was nowhere to be found.

The price may have changed retrospectively after the sale. I sold a domain at Afternic at a floor price and was a bit annoyed they did not try to get a higher price, closer to my asking price. Looking at my acount, my asking price was no longer there - that value now showed the actual sale price. They had overwritten my asking price with the floor price the domain sold at. But I could still see my original listing price and floor price in the spreadsheet of my listings that I had previously downloaded. Good thing, otherwise I might have suspected they had lowered the floor price to close a quick sale.

 

[equity78]

I don't believe GD would reverse the sale without you being able to prove somehow that the pricing was their glitch or something similar and even then the name might be out of their control.

Instead, you should work out with Maxtra a reasonable compensation for his time and effort and just pay for the name to get it back and don't put any bin price on it.

I know for fact they have, and it was no hack or anything like that. I believe @Keith has experienced it too. I think for anyone requesting it it would be a one time deal. And in this case @Dustie is sure they had it at $20,000.

 

[barybadrinath]

Awesome!

Mapledots in fact protected the domain name from further sale drama .

 

[Keith]

My advice to @Dustie is to never list the domain for sale. It’s extremely rare for someone to own their first name .com. I’ve offered $30-$40k for mine and the owner/pro domainer wants more. It’s sad but it is what it is.

 

[equity78]

My advice to @Dustie is to never list the domain for sale. It’s extremely rare for someone to own their first name .com. I’ve offered $30-$40k for mine and the owner/pro domainer wants more. It’s sad but it is what it is.

But you have a lot more common first name, this is the first Dustie I have ever met. Dusty sure, but Dustie? @Dustie Get an account at Efty have @Doron Vermaat help you out and use one of their excellent landers and have the name for sale there.

 

[Dustie]

Mapledots? Is your offer legitimate? I've not heard back from you...hope it's just because you're out at lunch or something...

 

[Keith]

But you have a lot more common first name, this is the first Dustie I have ever met. Dusty sure, but Dustie? @Dustie Get an account at Efty have @Doron Vermaat help you out and use one of their excellent landers and have the name for sale there.

Regardless of the spelling, she has her first name .com. That is a rare thing. No chance I’d let it go if it were mine.

 

[maxtra]

Mapledots? Is your offer legitimate? I've not heard back from you...hope it's just because you're out at lunch or something...

Domain is still in my possession and I will transfer it to you if GoDaddy does not

 

[Keith]

Mapledots? Is your offer legitimate? I've not heard back from you...hope it's just because you're out at lunch or something...

You need to call godaddy ASAP. They’ve put a flag on the initial transaction and @MapleDots wont be able to take control of the domain. It’s up to you, the initial buyer, and godaddy to get it resolved.

 

[xynames]

Mapledots? Is your offer legitimate? I've not heard back from you...hope it's just because you're out at lunch or something...

Read above. He hasn’t yet been able to take custody of the name.

Maxtra is in the driver’s seat here.

 

[wwwweb]

Given Godaddy hasn’t responded looks like it could be good news for Dustie.

I mean when you log into your domain manager you see premium listing prices listed. It’s good this get looked at, wouldn’t want this to happen to anbldy, especially someone who is fortunate to own their first name .com, which is mainly reserved for 90s registrants, deep pockets, or companies when it comes to good names.

I’m glad godaddy suspended the domain until it is resolved, if it did go legal, why involve more parties, this is how the icann 60 day rule came about with all the jumping to begin with.

I can see both the buyers, and sellers point of view from each side, just gave to let Godaddy figure it out. Given they haven’t commented, must be more to it.

 

[equity78]

Regardless of the spelling, she has her first name .com. That is a rare thing. No chance I’d let it go if it were mine.

Oh fair enough Keith but I think for some there is a price on everything and for others they just are not that tied to a domain name. I know I am not, Ray.com if I owned it, let's get a bidding war going, the highest price would be my only concern. I love people not characters on a screen, no emotional attachment whatsoever.

 

[Keith]

Domain is still in my possession and I will transfer it to you if GoDaddy does not

This is first class and how it should be handled. The community came together in this case and that’s a great thing!

 

[wwwulff]

Read above

Do the same - Maxtra just posted: Domain is still in my possession and I will transfer it to you if GoDaddy does not

 

[equity78]

Mapledots? Is your offer legitimate? I've not heard back from you...hope it's just because you're out at lunch or something...

Dustie you need to follow all the comments here, GoDaddy will not allow the push from Maxtra to Maple Dots. They probably are looking into how to reverse the transaction. Have you contacted anyone today, like @Paul Nicks ?

 

[xynames]

Domain is still in my possession and I will transfer it to you if GoDaddy does not

Do you mean transfer it to mapledots or to Dustie?

 

[Recons.Com]

I own my first name in .com and don't care that it is much rarer than Keith or Dustie. It is simply not for sale ))

Saves me bunch of time spelling my email over the phone. Often it goes like this: "You have my first name there in front of you? So it is my first name at my first name .com". No "apple, boy, cat" stuff )

 

[maxtra]

Do you mean transfer it to mapledots or to Dustie?

I will transfer to @Dustie even if it means taking the hit for it