Any recent cases of registrars snapping domains from clients?

[PolishGuy]

I've heard horror stories about Godaddy registering domains for itself when the users postponed registration for a day or two.
Note that those were names that were highly unlikely to be registered by anybody else.
Does this still happen?

 

[Dave_Z]

For at least the past two years, I've yet to see anyone post "proof" that Go Daddy does this other than "I heard from a friend of mine who heard from a friend who heard from a friend..." Sure it's (even remotely) possible someone from Go Daddy (or any registrar) does this, but pleeeeeeaaaaase at least post something factual to back up that assertion if ever.

They did make one semi-recent blog post about it, though:

http://inside.godaddy.com/front-running-debunking-myth/

 

[GiftedDomains]

I too think that Godaddy would never do this. It would be too risky for such a huge company and it wouldn't be worth it, since they make their millions with domain registrations, hosting, Godaddy auctions, closeouts, etc.
However no one can rule out the possibility that for instance a Godaddy Employee could misuse his position and data to snatch domains for himself, without Godaddy knowing this. There is a lot of money in this biz, so it could be that somneone can't withstand the temptation to make extra bucks with domains in addition to his salary in such companies.
However, i think that the risk that searches are monitored and the risk to lose a domain after searching for it is much larger in small and unknown companies.

Therefore i only use a few WHOIS services when i check the availablity of domains, and all of them are done with whois services of big companies (Godaddy included)

 

[PolishGuy]

For at least the past
They did make one semi-recent blog post about it, though:

http://inside.godaddy.com/front-running-debunking-myth/

OK, so it's called front running. Thanks.
But interesting comment under this post:

The very fact that Go Daddy has a system that logs the domains people search and what their availability is, says to me very plainly that they’re looking to buy up popular domains…

It's difficult for me to imagine that people who have access to this database aren't tempted to use that info and that this use can be prevented.

 

[alien51]

What i do when i'm testing a coupon if it is working:

I try to reg a garbage domain, apply the coupon in the shopping cart to see if the discount works.

If the coupon works, i add my real domain which is now at regular price. I then cancel the garbage domain and the coupon discount will now apply to my real domain. Then i process the order.

This way, if the coupon did not work in the first place, the system will not know the real domain i'm trying to reg. lol

 

[-EM-]

What i do when i'm testing a coupon if it is working:

I try to reg a garbage domain, apply the coupon in the shopping cart to see if the discount works.

If the coupon works, i add my real domain which is now at regular price. I then cancel the garbage domain and the coupon discount will now apply to my real domain. Then i process the order.

This way, if the coupon did not work in the first place, the system will not know the real domain i'm trying to reg. lol

The system (one system) will know your real reg, because you have to verify somewhere the domain you want to register is available.