Domain kiting

[sambtaylor]

Does anyone know if any progress is being made on shutting down the 5 day registration and cancel cycle? I have a few domains I am looking for that I watch being registered again and again every five days.



FYI, For those new to the subject: According to Bob Parsons, 35 million domain names were registered in April. I trust him - GoDaddy's one of the biggest registrars on the block, so they probably have their facts right.

Compared to a few years ago, this is a manifold increase. Surely, this is a good sign - a growing number of sites and so on.

Not so. The vast majority of these domains are NOT paid for and in reality are used by unscrupulous registrars to earn PPC (pay-per-click) traffic. This means that over 30 million are never paid for, yet none of them are available to the public, i.e. you and me.

Here's how the scheme works: any registrar can leave a deposit at Verisign (more on Verisign here) which allows it to purchase domains up to that deposit's limit. There's a 5-day money-back period in which the registrar can cancel the domains it purchased. What happens is that registrars continually cancel domains on the 5th day just to register them again immediately after. The only limit is the size of the deposit, a $6,000,000 one takes care of a million domains being permanently "kited" by a registrar.

Case in point (provided by Bob):

Consider the case of a little-known registrar with a Miami, Florida address known as Domain Doorman LLC ... [it] registered more than 11.5 million domain names in April 2006, but only permanently registered — or paid for — 68.4 thousand of those. This same discrepancy occurred in March as well. Doorman registered 4.8 million names, but only permanently registered — or paid for — 40.4 thousand.

Unfortunately, ICANN has had no comment. Until this practice stops, non-registrars (you and me) will have to settle for 25-letter-long domains. On top of that, we do need to pay to keep them. Not a level playing field by any standard.

 

[SharonTucci]

If those domains are really worth it to you, a simple way to handle it is to get a reseller account with Enom and one of the many scripts to do autochecks on availability of domains/registration. Most of these domains that are regged, deleted and reregged again are not instantaneously reregistered. I've gotten several domains I wanted by doing this.

I agree with the idea of the grace period for deletes and I do take advantage of it myself. But I do not think it should be without a cost. Moniker's 0.25 fee per reg makes sense.

 

[Kate]

Does anyone know if any progress is being made on shutting down the 5 day registration and cancel cycle? I have a few domains I am looking for that I watch being registered again and again every five days.
...

AFAIK no progress at all.
Is this always the same people who register again and again ?
As Sharon suggests you could put a backorder at enom or snap to grab the domains you are after.

I agree with the idea of the grace period for deletes and I do take advantage of it myself. But I do not think it should be without a cost. Moniker's 0.25 fee per reg makes sense.

Not all registrars charge for tasting and the $0.25 fee is pure profit for Moniker. I'm not going to use Moniker but Dynadot instead, where it is free.
However I'm not sure you are allowed to taste the same domain again and again with them. I'm fine with it, tasting is OK, kiting is not.
I think that the .org registry now has a $0.25 restocking fee, which should discourage heavy, blind tasting. For the moment there is no fee for .com/.net but with the abuse going on (kiting) I would not be suprised if they levy a fee too.

 

[tricolorro]

If those domains are really worth it to you, a simple way to handle it is to get a reseller account with Enom and one of the many scripts to do autochecks on availability of domains/registration. Most of these domains that are regged, deleted and reregged again are not instantaneously reregistered. I've gotten several domains I wanted by doing this.

I agree with the idea of the grace period for deletes and I do take advantage of it myself. But I do not think it should be without a cost. Moniker's 0.25 fee per reg makes sense.

:hi: Sharon,

The 25 cent fee is imposed by Moniker at Registrar level.

It's not imposed by ICAAN or the Registries.

(Except Pir.org which recently instituted a 5 cent tasting return fee).

Those that domain taste run there own Registrars - often several
Registrars.

The fee would have to be at registry level to work.

Patrick