Has my domain been hacked?

[Jake Hoffman]

Any help for this problem I'm facing would be greatly appreciated.

This happened to my mom yesterday.

When trying to go to the website for her business, she just got a generic landing page instead of her site.

When she told me I immediately checked the whois information for her domain and found it is now owned by a random person in Estonia instead of the company who manages her website in South Africa. And it's now available for sale as a premium domain for $4000!

I've been reading and following discussions on namepros for about a year now, deciding whether to start buying and selling domains, and have heard of some scam tactics for tricking you into transfer of ownership, but is it also possible for your domain ownership to be "hacked" and transferred? Or perhaps for the company managing the website to have been hit by some virus?

Sorry I'm still pretty new to this, and still learning terminology, and what sort of threats exist in the domain industry. Any advice on what might have happened, what to research, questions to ask the company website company or perhaps a better forum for these questions would be so much appreciated!

Thanks for your time
Dr Jake

TLDR: My mother's business website is now magically just a generic landing page, owned by a random person in Estonia, and for sale for $4000. What happened?? Please help!

 

[Name Trader]

Transferring to GoDaddy is one of the more tricky transfers to do. You need GoDaddy's Transaction ID and Security Code, and you will also need the Auth (EPP) Code from the losing Registrar. It's kinda overkill. If you have any problems related to the transfer (which it seems you don't), just provide this information to GoDaddy's Transfer Concierge, and they will do it for you. But they will need all 3 pieces of information.

I would expect your relationship with your previous webhost/developer is in tatters. And I would definitely not recommend you use them again. But you should at least try to get from them the latest copy of the website they have from them, before you terminate that relationship.

Since the domain will be registered at GoDaddy. I would definitely recommend that you do not use GoDaddy for hosting the domain. As @Kate has also recommended above. So you would need to find an alternative host.

Glad to see this has almost worked itself out. Mostly these things don't work out so well.

PS: I just remembered. You should check the registration details in your GoDaddy Control Panel after you have received the domain. To make sure you agree with them. GoDaddy have had a nasty habit of retaining the ownership details from the previous owner. The reason for which I cannot understand when you have purchased the domain from the previous owner.

 

[DnEbook]

Is Dr J related to Dr Phil ?

 

[golan]

GoDaddy have had a nasty habit of retaining the ownership details from the previous owner.

Right. I'm still getting tons of emails from them re domains i sold there years ago. Annoying as fuck.