registrars Registrars Pinching Your Bulk Domain Hack Search Results

Chances are they were already registry premiums. Some bulk checkers especially those not ties to a registrar won't distinguish between premium and no premium.

As you were searching for the domain names without knowing if they were registered, the domain names could have been long gone before you ran your search.

Have you checked the registration date on some of these domain names using a simple WHOIS check (look at the creation date)?

Front running (this is what the practice is called) is frowned upon by ICANN. An available domain name would not be registered. A registry reserved domain name or premium might provide a different result from the usual non-premium domain name and the site's script might not make that distinction. With ccTLDs involved, more parsing of the results are required.

If the bulk checker was simply using gTLD (legacy and new) zonefiles or DNS lookups, it will miss a percentage of domain names that have no nameservers. These dark domain names are have no nameservers because the registrants removed them, or because the are the subject of legal action, or they are in the process of being deleted.

When it comes to being a registrar, there are many small businesses that call themselves registrars but in reality they are just resellers. The list of ICANN accredited registrars is here:

https://www.icann.org/registrar-reports/accreditation-qualified-list.html

If a site is claiming to be an ICANN accredited registrar and they are not on this list, then they are not.

The ccTLDs generally have their own lists of accredited registrars. Those lists will generally be linked from the registry's website.

Regards...jmcc

Front running
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running
If you locate a bunch of names and leave them in cart too long you can bet that this will happen.

Thank you all for the feedback, it's very much appreciated.

jmcc, thank you for taking the time in giving such a concise and very informative response.

Ok, so here is a more detailed description of what really happened...

I performed a bulk search request on 101domain.com, with a list of over 1,000 words ending in a specific geographic TLD.

The results showed all the domains available to register:

Your domain is available!
xx.xx USD
Add To Cart

Those which were Premium:

Your domain is available!
Premium name. What is this?
x,xxx.xx USDRenewal xxx.xx USD

And those that were unavailable:

This domain name is unavailable.
Inquire

I think I might have even added one of the available ones to the cart at the time, but am not prepared to swear by this.

As I said, because I had to copy and paste everything to Excel in an un-formatted manner, I thought I'd leave it 'till the next day to sort it out.

Now, when I perform a WHOIS on any of the hundreds of the then available domains, I get:

"Reserved by Registry Operator
>>> Last update of WHOIS database: 2020-07-16T16:57:47Z <<<"

If I do the same on ICANN, I get:

"The requested domain was not found in the Registry or Registrar's RDAP server."

If I now perform the same search on 101domain.com for those available domains which were available at the time, they are now marked as unavailable.

Therefore, I can only assume the registrar has "front run" those domains and reserved them, as per the WHOIS query.

Many thanks.

Also, do you think this would warrant me filing a complaint with ICANN, or would they frown upon the fact I was researching domain hacks, given that one might argue that geographic TLDs shouldn't really be used for that purpose?

Arimor said:

Also, do you think this would warrant me filing a complaint with ICANN, or would they frown upon the fact I was researching domain hacks, given that one might argue that geographic TLDs shouldn't really be used for that purpose?

Click to expand...

ICANN won't be of any help since we're talking ccTLDs. They don't have any power over the registries.

What ccTLD are we talking about?

@Arimor I am sorry you had this trouble.

To protect against this type of thing I ran 50 names at a time through the GoDaddy Bulk Search, and it was returning on average 3 names a time which were still available and potentially of interest to me. I quickly registered the best of them each time before moving on to the next 50. I know it's slower this way but I'm happy to report that I had no troubles with this approach.

I should add I was searching for .coms only though and picked up 10 or so that day, having searched through many thousands taking breaks now and again. Hope this helps.

Thank you NameCheck, I didn't realise ICANN had no jurisdiction over ccTLDs, oh well, lesson learnt I guess.

@easywebdomains.net, thank you for the advice, I'll certainly be doing that going forward and not leaving it to the next day!

@Arimor I have a list of domains that I searched a month ago. I got 19 that were not registered before and today only 2 are regged so 17 left.

I've never used 101domains bulk search but I did and added to my cart just now.... I have sent you a list of these domains to check later to see if it is in fact that they are front running.

Michael Norris said:

@Arimor I have a list of domains that I searched a month ago. I got 19 that were not registered before and today only 2 are regged so 17 left.

I've never used 101domains bulk search but I did and added to my cart just now.... I have sent you a list of these domains to check later to see if it is in fact that they are front running.

Click to expand...

Thanks for doing this Michael. I have been to 101Domain and those domains are still available, as I thought they would be.

The issue here isn't with 101domain.com (as far as I'm aware), but more so with the country's registrar I was performing the searches on, which in this case was a Turkish geographic TLD.

My theory is that, the registrar in Turkey saw someone perform a 1000+ bulk query, albeit in batches of 100, and as a safeguard, decided to reserve those domains to prevent people, i.e. me, from potentially registering a list of domain hacks, seeing as presumably, these geographic TLDs by rights were created to be used by people who want to register a domain which relates to that specific geographical area, and not domain hacks.

Thanks once again for your help in testing, it's appreciated.

@Arimor Feel free to use that list to continue testing if you like.

In this case, I'm not so sure it's "front running", as the domains have been reserved by registry, meaning they can't be registered thus not avail for resale.

Better at least it happened before you paid up, than after the fact. It can be pretty disappointing, having some nice names in the account only to have them removed (money refunded) a few weeks later, due to this bug.

Seems to be a common theme with 101Domains, that's where it happened with me after purchase. Solace was, they got put to registry reserved, and not avail to anyone. Regardless, I was upset enough that I moved all my names (about 100) out of there.

Possibly the bulk searches trigger something that should have been done beforehand. Don't think it's anything nefarious though may seem so.

Arimor said:

"Reserved by Registry Operator
>>> Last update of WHOIS database: 2020-07-16T16:57:47Z <<<"

Click to expand...

Sorry for the delayed reply. That's a very different status to one that has been registered by the registrar. It means that the registry has held back the domain name from general registration.

If I do the same on ICANN, I get:

"The requested domain was not found in the Registry or Registrar's RDAP server."

Click to expand...

That lack of a result could have been what 101domain.com was using as an indication that the domain name was available for registration.

If I now perform the same search on 101domain.com for those available domains which were available at the time, they are now marked as unavailable. They may adjusted their scripts to detect the response for a registry reserved domain name.

Therefore, I can only assume the registrar has "front run" those domains and reserved them, as per the WHOIS query.

Click to expand...

A front run domain will show up as being registered by the registrar rather than the registry.

Regards...jmcc

Arimor said:

Thank you NameCheck, I didn't realise ICANN had no jurisdiction over ccTLDs, oh well, lesson learnt I guess.

Click to expand...

The ccTLDs are a law unto themselves. They play by their own rules. One of the important differences is that geographical names (cities,counties, states etc) are often reserved for local government. They may not be active but they will still be reserved. Depending on the ccTLD, they may not even be in the WHOIS or zone. The ccTLD registries also have rate limiting on their WHOIS servers so that the queries will be limited by IP address or by the number of queries per second. Before checking for available domain names in a ccTLD, it is always best to read the regulations on the ccTLD registry site.

Regards...jmcc

Thank you jmcc, really appreciate you taking the time to explain; this has certainly given me an insight into how some these ccTLD registrars operate!

Much appreciated.