What are the must have features for DNProtect.com?

equity78 · Oct 3, 2019

So what features are a must for DNProtect now that the name has been chosen?

The domains wanted thread will get closed so here is a dedicated thread to discussing the concept @Rob Monster outlined below.

@bhartzer and I have agreed to work on a new venture that is designed to protect end-users from buying damaged domains. Some of the risk factors that can be mitigated include:

Prior Fraudulent Conveyance
Domain Theft post purchase
Negative SEO
UDRP Complaint
Civil Trademark Claims
DDoS attack
Copyright / DMCA complaint
RBL/Spamhaus whitelisting
DNS Hijack protection

The product can be sold as a one-off risk assessment report for a fixed fee of $149 per domain. There will also be free API-based risk scoring estimate available to qualified partners, e.g. Estibot, etc.

The product upsell is an insurance product with target pricing of either:

(1) 1% of face value per year
(2) 4% of face value for duration of ownership

bmugford · Oct 3, 2019

Well, to start with there needs to either be an underwriter or large amount of assets set aside to cover the risk of the insurer. There needs to be the assets there to cover the issues that come up.

I think this is a solid idea in theory, but not sure about in reality. I am not sure what the demand is.

It would work well if you had many people paying for the product to spread the risk, but if you have few people, or just more risky clients then that is an issue.

It is possible one single legal issue could wipe out a huge amount of assets, especially with things like "Domain Theft post purchase" & "Civil Trademark Claims".

There needs to be absolute clarity on what is actually covered, because otherwise those type of issues could be open ended liabilities to the company.

Also, what does the term "face value" refer to when it comes to domains? I know what the terms mean in general, just not sure how it applies in this case.

Brad

Kassey Lee · Oct 3, 2019

To me, the most needed service is insurance to cover innocent purchase of a stolen domain and subsequent return to the original owner.

bmugford · Oct 3, 2019

Kassey Lee said:
To me, the most needed service is insurance to cover innocent purchase of a stolen domain and subsequent return to the original owner.

Yep. It is a huge issue for buyers, but also a potential huge liability for an insurer as well.

I think UDRP protection is a good idea as well, but different types of domains come with different types of risks. It would be hard to have a one size fits all solution.

Brad

carob · Oct 3, 2019

We've been suggesting something like this for some time, so I hope it works, but as @bmugford says, it has to be solid.

It needs to stipulate a clear written agreement which identifies buyer and seller as well as what is being sold - it seems this is often neglected and leaves a gaping hole in any claims, according to the CQD thread:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/resolved-domainer-loses-26k-on-a-stolen-domain.1068888/page-15#post-6616866 :

Escrow.com does not require or handle that. and on a first look seems Sedo escrow do not either: https://sedo.com/uk/services/domain-transfer/escrow/

I wonder if this product is of interest to the marketplaces too, not just buyer and seller. I also have wondered if it might overlap with identity theft insurance.

carob · Oct 3, 2019

There were some other points in the CQD thread, such as a risk rating and history research:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/re...-a-stolen-domain.1068888/page-51#post-7090174

About Escrow.com - well they make clear due diligence is for the buyer to do. Probably there is a market for a service giving reports on a domain's history beyond what Domaintools offer, and maybe a rating system for how likely it is that a domain or transaction is going to be problematic. Insuring a purchase would be a separate service. Endusers just don't have the time or skills to do all this themselves - but people have not been seeing the risks, and why would they until something like this blows up.

Then again, domain appraisals have a bad rep and deserve it.

The weird thing is to sell this service to those who don't understand the risk, you have to explain the risk to them, which may make them back out of a purchase.

oldtimer · Oct 3, 2019

To provide a risk assessment report for a fee to evaluate a domain according to the criteria that is listed in the original post might be a doable plan. You can also charge different fees depending on how detailed the client wants the report to be. But to insure the client against all these risks is a totally different matter that goes beyond just being an expert in the domain Industry and requires detailed knowledge and expertise in the insurance Industry. IMO

PS: It might be a good idea to also include in the report whether the domain has a good chance of being trademarkable or not and that if the exact same name is already being used in other extensions for providing similar services. IMO

7363824 · Oct 3, 2019

bmugford said:
Yep. It is a huge issue for buyers, but also a potential huge liability for an insurer as well.

I think UDRP protection is a good idea as well, but different types of domains come with different types of risks. It would be hard to have a one size fits all solution.

Brad

I like the UDRP protection concept. Maybe make an option to get it to cover a whole portfolio for one fee, so long as each domain meets certain qualifications, like passing the automated checks of this service.

bhartzer · Oct 3, 2019

Regarding Escrow.com and the marketplaces: it is my understanding that Escrow.com requires a vehicle history report and carfax type report when people use them for vehicles (i.e., someone buys a car on eBay and uses escrow.com).

There currently is nothing available for domains, so any escrow service that deals with domains should start requiring the risk assessment type report as part of the escrow process. It protects both the buyer and the seller, as well as the escrow company.

If you were browsing domains on a marketplace and you saw that certain domains were already checked and approved, would you be more likely to buy that domain? Similar to what used car dealers are offering, a CarFax report before you buy.

Rob Monster · Oct 3, 2019

Great input here.

@bhartzer, @DomainGraduate, @Ala Dadan and I are meeting this afternoon to plan out the next steps for the development and commercialization.

This type of co-creation input is super helpful for refining the Minimum Viable Product and getting it live in the market. Fortunately, a lot of pre-work has been done on multiple fronts.

For those who are missing the context, see related posts:

https://www.namepros.com/threads/poll-for-name-protection-product-concept.1155658/
https://www.namepros.com/threads/name-validation-and-name-protection-product-concept.1155026

We are also working on re-insurance partnerships beyond the normal D&O, E&O, General Liability and Cyber Liability coverage. Re-insurance is only needed for catastrophic unrecoverable loss.

EJS · Oct 3, 2019

I think an insurance product like this would be very helpful to investors. Insuring domain names against UDRP or cybersquatting claims would be a nice product, and certainly a theft rider might be useful in some circumstances, especially with GDPR making it difficult to track the provenance and registration history of a domain name.

Some considerations of an offering like this I can think of off the top of my head:

- Will likely need it approved by DOI / Insurance Commissioner for each state in the US where there will be insureds if it is an insurance product.
- If there is UDRP or cybersquatting coverage, all domain names could likely benefit. I think the product is helpful if it 1) pays for the defense and 2) if it pays for the value of a domain name lost to UDRP or lawsuit.
- Higher risk domain names will be more likely to need an insurance product. With higher risk names being covered, the loss ratio will likely be high.
- There might be loss ratio requirements that have to be met (I am not sure with this type of product).
- Rapid coverage decision making will be necessary because a buyer may only agree to a deal if insurance coverage is available. I presume the product couldn't cover everything - for instance, it wouldn't make sense to provide UDRP coverage for a name like WorkForGoogle.com or something like that.
- As Brad noted, you will need to ensure the product is well-capitalized or has a well-known re-insurance provider / partner so investors are willing to buy the coverage knowing there are adequate reserves.
- If you create a solid product with a trusted partner, registrars might consider offering it as an upsell, although I don't know if any / many registrars would offer a product that was created by a competing registrar.

I think a well-funded and trusted insurance product could be helpful, and I look forward to seeing what comes of this.

7363824 · Oct 3, 2019

EJS said:
although I don't know if any / many registrars would offer a product that was created by a competing registrar.

Works fo Godaddy's Afternic platform, look at how many registrars sell Afternic domains not to mention those with selling side support. IMO unless they have their own competing product they might as well to have another upsell opportunity.

Also would be nice to get bulk investor pricing so say I could easily pay for all my domains then link to the report to show potential buyers.

JB Lions · Oct 3, 2019

bhartzer said:
There currently is nothing available for domains, so any escrow service that deals with domains should start requiring the risk assessment type report as part of the escrow process. It protects both the buyer and the seller, as well as the escrow company.

Uh, no. You already have extra hoops introduced with the KYC stuff, this would be another. I imagine requiring that would pretty much wreck the domain escrow part of their business, another escrow would benefit from not requiring it. If somebody wants to buy it as part of the sale, this domain also comes with a risk assessment, that would be up to them.

As far as the first part, is most of that available for free just by looking in the right place? If so, somebody can just come along, automate it, charge less.

I figured if there was a real market for stuff like this, somebody would have already tapped it, but I don't know. Don't most big businesses already have insurance for this and that? Or just chalk it up to the cost of doing business.

The only interesting thing to me in the insurance part. Not insuring the domain but the domainer. If somebody paid $100 a year or something and if they ever got a UDRP or other issues, it would get handled thru this.

7363824 · Oct 3, 2019

JB Lions said:
The only interesting thing to me in the insurance part. Not insuring the domain but the domainer. If somebody paid $100 a year or something and if they ever got a UDRP or other issues, it would get handled thru this.

I think both are valuable. Insurance for the domain, if it is stolen. Because even with due diligence you can get burned. And I agree someone should offer portfolio wide UDRP insurance for domainers, so long as the domain isn't clearly a tm violation, which using an automated review service should confirm that.

Rob Monster · Oct 4, 2019

Quick update here.

The project team had a good planning session this afternoon for DNProtect. We should have the first screen concepts ready in 2 weeks. The guts of the project is the behind the scenes data scraping and scoring algorithm that has been working on for years

I do believe the breakthrough idea is actually the idea of an insurance product but one where the risks are known, measured and managed. There are adequate solutions out there that will tell you if a domain is fail-listed at Google, or otherwise impaired. We know how to detect and monitor these risks.

We can insure construction equipment and commercial real estate, but the domain name which powers the core of the digital presence for most companies is somehow uninsurable? If you think about it, that is actually nuts. If a business were to lose their domain in UDRP, theft or loss, you will need a new site, new emails, new stationery, new signage, and will start from zero SEO and zero backlinks.

By introducing the ability to contain domain-related risk, I believe we accomplish three things:

1. We can bundle domain buying with adequate protections and safeguards such that even small businesses without IT and legal departments, can adequately backstop against unforeseen expenses related to domain ownership. This is what insurance does well -- it spreads out risk.

2. We can bundle domain ownership with pooled and curated supply chain for protecting the asset. For example, if you get a UDRP claim, we will have a stable of go-to resources for managing that process of advising the policyholder whether to pay out the policy, or to defend vigorously.

3. We elevate domains further into the realm of being a legitimate asset class. If a domain has value, and can be insured, it also can be financed. No conventional bank is currently able to lend against a domain name. However, when the risk of loss can be indemnified, it can become a bankable asset.

For domain sellers, marketplaces, and registrars, insurance represents another recurring annuity that can be bundled with a domain. After all, a domain renewal fee might be $10, but the annual revenue on domain insurance could be orders of magnitude greater than that. Insurance makes the pie bigger.

We have made progress this week on assembling some capable people. I am on the lookout for folks who understand both domains and the insurance underwriting, regulation and sales channels. Interestingly enough, one active contributor to the poll thread is just such a guy: @Makbliss.

JB Lions · Oct 4, 2019

Rob Monster said:
Quick update here.

The project team had a good planning session this afternoon for DNProtect. We should have the first screen concepts ready in 2 weeks. The guts of the project is the behind the scenes data scraping and scoring algorithm that has been working on for years

I do believe the breakthrough idea is actually the idea of an insurance product but one where the risks are known, measured and managed. There are adequate solutions out there that will tell you if a domain is fail-listed at Google, or otherwise impaired. We know how to detect and monitor these risks.

We can insure construction equipment and commercial real estate, but the domain name which powers the core of the digital presence for most companies is somehow uninsurable? If you think about it, that is actually nuts. If a business were to lose their domain in UDRP, theft or loss, you will need a new site, new emails, new stationery, new signage, and will start from zero SEO and zero backlinks.

By introducing the ability to contain domain-related risk, I believe we accomplish three things:

1. We can bundle domain buying with adequate protections and safeguards such that even small businesses without IT and legal departments, can adequately backstop against unforeseen expenses related to domain ownership. This is what insurance does well -- it spreads out risk.

2. We can bundle domain ownership with pooled and curated supply chain for protecting the asset. For example, if you get a UDRP claim, we will have a stable of go-to resources for managing that process of advising the policyholder whether to pay out the policy, or to defend vigorously.

3. We elevate domains further into the realm of being a legitimate asset class. If a domain has value, and can be insured, it also can be financed. No conventional bank is currently able to lend against a domain name. However, when the risk of loss can be indemnified, it can become a bankable asset.

For domain sellers, marketplaces, and registrars, insurance represents another recurring annuity that can be bundled with a domain. After all, a domain renewal fee might be $10, but the annual revenue on domain insurance could be orders of magnitude greater than that. Insurance makes the pie bigger.

We have made progress this week on assembling some capable people. I am on the lookout for folks who understand both domains and the insurance underwriting, regulation and sales channels. Interestingly enough, one active contributor to the poll thread is just such a guy: @Makbliss.

Is the thinking it's the buyer or seller who would purchase this assessment?

Stuff like this, can you explain more, I'm not the most technical person:

"DDoS attack"

So I have a domain where 10 years ago there was a live site and there was a DDoS attack. If I paid for this assessment, could I be paying for killing my own sale? What would an attack from 10 years ago, have anything to do with a domain I'm selling today. Couldn't this make the buyer wary?

Rob Monster · Oct 4, 2019

JB Lions said:
Is the thinking it's the buyer or seller who would purchase this assessment?

Stuff like this, can you explain more, I'm not the most technical person:

"DDoS attack"

So I have a domain where 10 years ago there was a live site and there was a DDoS attack. If I paid for this assessment, could I be paying for killing my own sale? What would an attack from 10 years ago, have anything to do with a domain I'm selling today. Couldn't this make the buyer wary?

Epik does provide DDoS mitigation today via BitMitigate.com. It is a commercial product that has been bundled conveniently for non-technical people here:

https://www.epik.com/resilient/

It is available monthly, annual, or forever. It addresses a lot of the major threats, one of which is DDoS.

As for the assessment, it is free. You have an Alexa rank, or a Google pagerank, whether you asked for one or not. Same with a credit score.

So, there is no subscriber cost to the scoring data. There could be a cost to request the equivalent of a "hard pull" where the diagnostic details of the score are revealed.

There is no public record of DDoS attacks, nor is there much public record of downtime. So I don't see this being a factor. Downtime could lead to a site being deindexed by Google -- not really an insurable scenario.

What is insurable is the ability to protect against DDoS without additonal cost. Most sites will never need Layer 4 or Layer 7 DDoS mitigation. However, if you need it, you want it fast and without nosebleed cost.

JB Lions · Oct 4, 2019

Rob Monster said:
Epik does provide DDoS mitigation today via BitMitigate.com. It is a commercial product that has been bundled conveniently for non-technical people here:

https://www.epik.com/resilient/

It is available monthly, annual, or forever. It addresses a lot of the major threats, one of which is DDoS.

As for the assessment, it is free. You have an Alexa rank, or a Google pagerank, whether you asked for one or not. Same with a credit score.

So, there is no subscriber cost to the scoring data. There could be a cost to request the equivalent of a "hard pull" where the diagnostic details of the score are revealed.

There is no public record of DDoS attacks, nor is there much public record of downtime. So I don't see this being a factor. Downtime could lead to a site being deindexed by Google -- not really an insurable scenario.

What is insurable is the ability to protect against DDoS without additonal cost. Most sites will never need Layer 4 or Layer 7 DDoS mitigation. However, if you need it, you want it fast and without nosebleed cost.

Ah ok, the first post says:

"@bhartzer and I have agreed to work on a new venture that is designed to protect end-users from buying damaged domains. Some of the risk factors that can be mitigated include:"

That was in the list, so it seems like checking the past history, damaged domains. But you're saying it's not past history of DDos attacks but protection from?

Then you said "As for the assessment, it is free." But above it says:

"The product can be sold as a one-off risk assessment report for a fixed fee of $149 per domain."

Is the assessment free or $149?

Rob Monster · Oct 4, 2019

JB Lions said:
Ah ok, the first post says:

"@bhartzer and I have agreed to work on a new venture that is designed to protect end-users from buying damaged domains. Some of the risk factors that can be mitigated include:"

That was in the list, so it seems like checking the past history, damaged domains. But you're saying it's not past history of DDos attacks but protection from?

Then you said "As for the assessment, it is free." But above it says:

"The product can be sold as a one-off risk assessment report for a fixed fee of $149 per domain."

Is the assessment free or $149?

This is still in the planning stage so keep that in mind.

The idea is that it will be possible to look up any domain's DNP score. If someone wants to see the detailed diagnostic report with recommendations, they could pay for that, i.e. upsell to domain reputation repair.

However, I believe as soon as the supply chain is in place, the far more interesting product is the ability to insure the domain, in which case the domain is actively monitored against impairment.

Recons.Com · Oct 4, 2019

Escrow: if a buyer and seller are willing to do the transaction, it would be foolish for an escrow company to require purchase of "carfax" for a name. It is quite frankly none of their business.

name history: basic check can be done by a buyer who knows the importance of history. There are plenty of tools for this, including archive.org and spam score checking. This might be a useful service, but creating awareness will be a problem. Aftermarket buyers are rare and it is not like they are regularly buying. Very often, it is an impulse purchase.

udrp: if it is for the whole value of the name, then again the challenge is arriving at a number that works for both for the service provider and buyer.

Insuring domain: if it is already a business, domain is just a part of the risks and probably is covered by the comprehensive package of the events that disrupt the business? If it is not a business, then it is cost/benefit analysis. Investors buy names for 1/10 to 1/1000 of the potential sale price. So, if he spent $20 to acquire $2000 "msrp" name, he'd be willing to pay only zero to few bucks for it and that is one time fee only. Does it justify the business? I mean, people are waiting for $1 promos to buy names, how much are they going to pay for insurance?

And if we are talking high value names, there are only so many around in the world. Maybe, 100,000 to 1,000,000, depending on your definition of super premium. And then, lots of those are in use by large/medium companies who insure the business, not every bit of it or owned by big fish that can "self-insure".

In short, if there is a "pain" this project is addressing, it is not thought through well enough yet. But hopefully something viable comes out.

Embrand · Oct 4, 2019

It sounds good, but it also sounds like something that requires a lot of legal insight and employees that are actually trained in insurance?

Rob Monster · Oct 5, 2019

Thinking about the true cost of losing a domain name for an established business. I can think of many:

- Legal defense costs
- Loss of search engine presence
- Switching email addresses
- Reprinting of all stationery and marketing collateral
- Lost business from past customer contacts

Other costs?

carob · Oct 5, 2019

Rob Monster said:
Thinking about the true cost of losing a domain name for an established business. I can think of many:

- Legal defense costs
- Loss of search engine presence
- Switching email addresses
- Reprinting of all stationery and marketing collateral
- Lost business from past customer contacts

Other costs?

Cost of rebranding and new domain name.
Security and financial costs of email to old domain being grabbed by scammers who set up catch-all email address.
Lost traffic.
Loss of face and credibility.
Loss of access to third party accounts using email addresses on domain.

bmugford · Oct 5, 2019

The problem is some of those losses are extremely hard to quantify. The actual loss could be very subjective on many of those things.

Brad

Rob Monster · Oct 5, 2019

bmugford said:
The problem is some of those losses are extremely hard to quantify. The actual loss could be very subjective on many of those things.

Brad

True, I was just working to catalog some of the known losses associated with domain loss. So, yes, the domain name renewal might be $10, but the consequence of domain loss could easily be $100,000 for a mid-sized company. For some companies, that would be catastrophic as an unplanned switching cost.

The list is getting long:

- Legal defense costs
- Loss of search engine presence
- Switching email addresses
- Reprinting of all stationery and marketing collateral
- Lost business from past customer contacts
- Lost site visitor traffic
- Damage to reputation due to abrupt force to rebrand
- Loss of access to third party accounts tied to email addresses
- Rebranding if comparable domain could not be secured
- Human effort to update all social profiles and directory entries

It would be easy to walk someone through a short quiz about the company and gather some essential intake info:

- Domain name:

- Year of founding

- Number of employees

- Annual revenue

- Do you do any of the following:

* Print advertising
* Trade show marketing
* Billboard or Outdoor advertising

And then look at:

- Estimated site traffic
- Number of backlinks

The system can then model the estimated switching cost, and estimated economic loss.

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