Namecheap no longer 'safe'

[lzy]

I'm probaby the only one but prior to registering I'll check the availability at Namecheap.com. I read about doing searches at Godaddy and being snapped up and I was pretty happy that none of that was happening over here at Namecheap.

But just last night, I ran a search via Namecheap and found a name I kinda like was available but didn't get.

And I just checked few minutes ago, *POOF* regged on 05-aug-2007. Blah.

Just a warning to those who care.

 

[Bannen]

I do so many searches for my 'availables' list, I can really compare these things; I've found:
Godaddy, it seems, makes visible your searches. If someone searches a word, on the results page you'll see, down below, a 'more options' area, that seems to be a mixture of owned names for sale, then your keyword that has been auto-joined with the same kinds of secondary words each time like 'best', 'free', 'new', etc. Many registrars do this.
Then it also shows some names, with your keyword, that are obviously other people's searches... they're just too random, way out, to have been autoscripted by GD. I don't know if GD themselves would nab any of your searches, I doubt it, but that's irrelevant since anyone can see your search terms.
In my experience, my searches at Godaddy result in the most of my searched names taken, and taken the fastest, of any other place I've ever searched.
I have a few dozen names there, but don't use them much anymore due to that and other reasons.

Namecheap searches, for me, result in a lot of my searched names taken also, and quickly after my searches. Again, I wouldn't think Namecheap gets them, that just doesn't make sense or ethics and I'm sure they don't do that. But someone's seeing my searched names when I go through them.
I do, however, love them as a registrar, and keep almost all my names with them, except the best ones, which I keep at Moniker.

With Moniker searches, I've had a much smaller percentage of searched names taken, and results are nebulous because I don't search there often. They, like GD, seem to have a more options area where others' searches are made public when you search a specific term, but again, I don't do searches there enough to say anything for sure.

I use dnaz for secure searches. It has the occasional glitch and will show a name as avail when it isn't... but I've never had a dnaz-searched name be taken shortly after my search. Just never happened. Dnaz is short for domain name analyzer, a small program you download to your computer.

Note that I haven't tried iwhois.com, but may give them a shot soon

To summarize: I'm not pretending to know what the registrars do with our searches, but when I see that I can search thousands of names through one place and many of those names get regged within a couple days, then search thousands of names through another place and none, or only a couple, names are taken by chance... that makes things very obvious, the results speak for themselves: It's not about 'coincidence' or 'chance' that others just regged those names, except in a very small percentage... in one place, they're seen and taken by whoever can see your searches, in another place they're not seen.

I have no problem with the registrars about this. Just need to be careful where you do your searching, if it's for names you might not reg right away.

 

[flashbanger]

I used namecheap as well and also xwhois.com.

Both grabbed some domains I wanted and fell free 3 days later again. (weren't that good :P )

Now I use the check on http://www.tiw.eu where they don't log the requests for sure! (the site is in Dutch but they are busy translating and building to English)

(checks are on the right side of the page where "Controleer uw naam in meerdere domeinextensies" stands)

 

[onewordonly]

This is really a major problem for everyone in this industry & I see many threads on various forums springing up about this more & more everyday. As I have said before it is the biggest scam since Registerfly (& probably way before that)... I think it is about time that ICANN do something about this and stamp this shady practice out by registers that we are meant to be able to trust. We don't know who to trust anymore as most of the ones we thought were ok are now been blacklisted....

Most of my searches are now done with direct calls to the whois for the tld and if it is available I register it straight away.

I would suggest that everyone that this happens to write to ICANN with the exact details, name of domain, time/date & register and maybe they might try to do something about it but that might take years going on past issues.

The problem is that some say this register is ok or this register is ok & then you read later that this happened with that register etc so nothing is certain, if you have a good name to register is it worth the risk anymore?

 

[estibot.com]

I also had the www.estibot.com up at the same time and I checked many of these old names i had found. QUOTE]

I can say that EstiBot does not record the entries and unless someone is hacking your connection directly (which is very, very unlikely), there should be absolutely no way anyone can detect your entries.

EstiBot does not record the searches, there is no database. Such a database has been requested to speed up repeat appraisals, and I may yet implement it but it will be secure and I and only I will have access to it and frankly could not be even bothered to go through thousands of appraised names in the hope of finding a potentially good reg. I'm also not at all inclined to do such a thing.

For transparency's sake, I'll say that I can personally see the last couple of hundred searches in my site statistics program, but I only check that once or twice daily and use it for quality control purposes and no one else has access to it.

So: as far as things are under my control, you are safe using EstiBot for your domain name research. Coincidences do happen considering that thousands of domain names are regged daily.

I'm disturbed to hear that domaintools is not safe...I've been using that, but will stick to Moniker from now on for whois purposes.


Josh

 

[deleted984054565403]

DomainTools pulled another one on me. About a week or two ago, I checked a long name that no one else would have had interest in and checked it ONLY at DomainTools. A week later, it's registered...

 

[Kate]

DomainTools pulled another one on me. About a week or two ago, I checked a long name that no one else would have had interest in and checked it ONLY at DomainTools. A week later, it's registered...

They are using cached data so it's not always reliable...

 

[onewordonly]

DomainTools pulled another one on me.

I was going to contact them to see if they would like to respond to this thread and explain what is going on but you have to register there just to contact them... well if anyone has an account setup there then please let them know so we can hear their response because I think some of their tools are great and it would be a shame to not be able to use them anymore...

 

[flashbanger]

I got an account there, i will ask them for response and take a look at this thread.

Edit:
Alright, posted a Support question.

 

[dna]

Register your name immediately.
You have only yourself to blame if you dont.

 

[Dave_Z]

I was going to contact them to see if they would like to respond to this thread and explain what is going on but you have to register there just to contact them... well if anyone has an account setup there then please let them know so we can hear their response because I think some of their tools are great and it would be a shame to not be able to use them anymore...

https://support.domaintools.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=8

There is no possible way what you type in whois.sc or DomainTools.com gets out to anyone. No company that we are aware of spies on their own customers.

Believe whatever you want.

 

[onewordonly]

There is some new breaking news... here: http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?p=2122913

 

[Bannen]

Register your name immediately.
You have only yourself to blame if you dont.

I can easily search a couple thousand names in one sitting. Maybe 400 or more of those might be available. I do these searches almost every day. Need some time to do reasearch on a decent name to see if it'll be feasible to take the chance regging it.
Like most here, I can't just reg every name I kind of like, the moment I see it's available -- or I'd have to reg hundreds of names a month.

Just yesterday I searched, including some Sanskrit names. In the late morning I found SanskritLanguage.com, among a couple dozen others. In the afternoon I checked its Overture and liked it enough to get it... and it was gonzo. I'd done my searches on Namecheap, my registrar of choice. Happened with a couple other names just as fast yesterday, but the others weren't as good.

So remember, this isn't a complaint about registrars, they make it obvious that people can see and reg your searched names... it's just a nudge that if you search for domain names often, and you want at least a few hours or days to do some research on those names that you think you might like to reg, you gotta use a secure search source. Simple as that.

 

[-Raja-]

.....Now i'm a strong believer that namecheap is ' No Longer Safe'. A couple of names that i searched at the beginning of this thread on namecheap have been Registered just yesterday and whois privacy is enabled.

 

[Silhouette]

NC is using e N o m's API
e N o m is not safe... how can NC be safe...

just my 2 cents
peace

 

[lzy]

So it looks like it's not just happening to me. Oh well. Sorry to hear that Raj. :/

 

[Kate]

NC is using e N o m's API
e N o m is not safe... how can NC be safe...

just my 2 cents
peace

Care to elaborate ?

 

[lzy]

Namecheap's a enom reseller.

 

[jarmas]

Namecheap is the best and safest place I have known to search for domains without them being regged. Personally I have searched for a lot of names and a lot of the gd names i searched for are still available now. I believe namecheap doesnt do such a despicable thing

 

[-Raja-]

I believe namecheap doesnt do such a despicable thing

yes,i too believed that till today

 

[Len]

This reminds me of the Salem witch hunt! I think Namecheap is being accused of unscrupulous practices to which there is not one shred of verifiable evidence that has been produced. To point a finger and say "It's a witch" does not prove it's a witch!!