GoDaddy selling your name searches?

[ulasbbtr]

One week ago I was making some searches after the late midnight hours. Checked it at godaddy, it was available. I was so sleepy that I decided to purchase it in the following day. Morning (early afternoon ), I checked the name and surprised that it was registered. That would be OK someone discovered it too, there are lots of domainers. I checked the whois it was showing a registrar that I don't know, still couldn't remember its name. In the info it shows name created at JAN 1 2008, etc no admin contact information.

One day later I checked the whois info again, that was same, only shows registrar creation date, but still no contact info. Also at internic there was no information available. And today I checked the name again to discover whom registered the name. It is strange this time creation of the domain was changed like the following:
Creation Date: 04-jan-2008
Expiration Date: 04-jan-2009
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.

I read some things about Godaddy's selling your search history to firms. This experience made me somewhat sure about that action. Probably they held the name for themselves for two days, and then sold to someone else. I don't know what happened in the background, but there is a bad smell for me.

 

[sparkplug]

For the past four or five days I've checked the availability of [myfullname]sucks.com at GoDaddy twice a day and it still hasn't been grabbed. So my conclusion is:

a) Whoever ends up with the list of checked names just regs names with a decent amount of potential

or

b) It's not happenin' any more. Perhaps the NetSol incident scared away whatever company was regging the GoDaddy names?

or

c) I'm liked so much that nobody would want to be that mean to me

 

[Dave_Z]

a) GoDaddy (or whoever ends up with the list of checked names) just regs names with a decent amount of potential

You mean for themselves? I guess Tim Ruiz's statement above means nada?

 

[sparkplug]

I wasn't trying to accuse GoDaddy; I think they're innocent, although there's still a chance someone at GoDaddy is doing this without Ruiz knowing. Anywho, post edited to clarify I'm not pointing the finger at GD.

 

[interestedenough]

I think that the bots that snitch the domain from your searches might check if the domain has been previously registered and dropped. So, if you search a domain that was dropped in the past, it might get taken.

I believe that this happened to me on the fly, that is, when I searched the domain for the first time, it got snitched under my nose. It might have been some kind of script running on my client(browser, or OS), or it might have been something on the server side at Go Daddy, or at the Whois database level... I guess I will never know. This domain was later dropped anyways and I registered a few days after.

I contacted Go Daddy, and they basically listened to my complaining and told me that this has happened to others, and that in part, the practice of domain tasting made it way too easy for those rogue parties to snatch your name under your nose, because the risk was very very low for them. To that end, I think that Tim Ruiz's statement is in support of somehow preventing domain tasting practices, because they are being abused by a few people.