Domain Spying

[xman]

Last February 2007 I found an unregistered domain and regged it with my previous registrar. It was in my account but still pending and few hours later, it was gone. When I checked the whois info it was registered to someone else in Thailand of a sudden. I called my registrar and told them the whole situation. The customer support told me that the domain should be mine since I regged it first. He told me that he will do the best he can for me to have the domain back but a day later he told me there is nothing really he can do. I was very disappointed and decided to find a more reputable registrar. By the way the domain in this case is mail.cc. Eventhough .cc is a weak ext but mail goes perfectly with .CC extension

Surely enough I have found the best registrar - Moniker.

Yesterday, I was searching for some top keywords with Moniker and I couldn't believed I found one. I do however find some few gems (top keywords such as Property, Video, Blackjack, .etc) with ccTLD and managed to reggeed them without any problem either with Moniker or other ccTLD registrars.

So I regged this gem yesterday (10-30-07) and it was in working progress. Normally that's what happen when I regged some ccTLD with Moniker but it would only take a few minutes sometimes days for me to get the domain but I do get them.

This domain that I registered yesterday afternoon failed and I wonder why would it? I was available and other keywords were taken with this ccTLD when I checked them except the one I regged yesterday.

I called my Rep. and told him what happen and surely enough it is registered to some consulting company in Germany in todays date 10-31-07.

My rep told me that he would let his CEO take a look at the domain but he cannot guarantee that I will get the domain. I cannot disclose the domain name at this moment.

How could anyone prevent this type of situation from happening? Is this preventable?

Do domain spies exist? If they do exist, is this a legal practice?

 

[Kate]

Concerning mail.cc creation date indicates 16-feb-2007 and it's owned by a Thai citizen. I am wondering if it's not a dropped domain and both of you tried to register it at the same time. Maybe he beat you by a few seconds.
You have to be careful when registering domains because some registrars have buggy scripts and if there is a glitch in the process the name could be falsely reported as registered and appear in your account...
Another possibility is that it was hijacked from your account...
The current registrar is KEY-SYSTEMS GMBH. Do you recognize this registrar ?
If you used a reseller verify if they are actually using KEY-SYSTEMS.

 

[xman]

I regged mail.cc on Feb 15, 20007 the day before it was regged by someone else.

As far as my account being hi-jacked that's out of question. I've never been hi-jacked with any of my account since I've been using an online transaction

I've been using the most reputable registrar (Moniker) as of now and the only resellers I used are for Dot IN domains and that's about it. I didn't even realized until now about Key-Systems GmbH. Thanks for pointing that out

And the info in the whois about this domain I regged yesterday has the same Registrar Key-Systems GmbH

 

[Kate]

It's very possible that Moniker is a reseller for Key-Systems GmbH when it comes to ccTLDs... Tucows is also often used by other registrars for non-gTLD domains. You should ask them (or check the whois if you have other names in the same ext with them).