Someone is squatting on gmail addresses, using domainers' IDs!!!

[Ms Domainer]

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Defend Your ID and Reputation!!!

Domain Magnate (Domain Magnate » Blog Archive » Someone Snatched My Email!) has posted a disturbing article about gmail squatting. Evidently, someone is registering gmails, using the ID handles of various domainers, both well-known and less known.

Sure enough, when I checked to see if MsDomainer [at] gmail [dot] com was available, it was taken. In fact, even the variations were gone.

I checked Yahoo! as well--MsDomainer was still available, so I took it, just as a defensive move.

I can think of only two reasons an outside party would want to squat on an ID that someone else uses regularly on blogs, forums, and even in commerce:

1. To try selling the account to the ID owner (I’m not interested, by the way—I have just switched to domain-based emails for my business).

2. To scam others, using the gmail address to masquerade as the rightful ID owner. This second possibility is more disturbing because one’s reputation could be sullied in a domain scam perpetrated by the “owner” of the gmail account!​

So I just want everyone to know that I am NOT the owner of MsDomainer [at] gmail [dot] com and that if you receive domain offers from this gmail, or ANY FREEBIE email using MsDomainer or its variations, it's not from me.

Starting today, when I send out emails to potential buyers or sellers, such sales messages will NOT originate from a freebie gmail or email account, but from a domain-based email, one that offers my Whois information in the light of day.

My message to you: I recommend that you check to see if your ID is available in both Gmail and Yahoo! and, if they are, to sign them up. Most importantly, keep vigilant.

Protect Your ID, even if it’s just an identity that you use on your blogs and in forums!

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[npcomplete]

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npcomplete

You are missing a very important point.

This matter is much more than the inconvenience of not being able to get a gmail account with your User Name.

This squatter could impersonate each and every one of us affected that has a User Name uniquely ours.

No, I didn't miss the point at all. It is no different than somebody taking my first/lastname.com, or for that matter somebody registering tricolorro.net (available) and using that to scam. It looks like tricolorro.com was recently registered (maybe you).

Do I like it? No. Other than register all variations of my name and username in all extensions, and all known free and paid email providers there is not much I can do about it... and I am not about to do that.

Like I said above in the previous post, I didn't mean to offend, but it is a bit ironic.


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[nucleotide]

thanks for the reminder. Got mine.

 

[johname]

johname gmail is not available, its not me lol

Remember if your name is quite nice like "Ms Domainer" it's a very good chance your name would be taken on gmail by now even if they didnt target you. But yeah people seem to hit these ids specifically.

 

[Ms Domainer]

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I no longer use freebie emails to do business.

The point is, defaultuser, we're worried that a scammer might be doing damage under our user ID's. I have used Ms Domainer for three years and have the domain to match.

I don't particularly want to own that gmail address, but I also don't want someone else to scam an innocent buyer who might think that he or she is doing business with me.

This is the main reason I started this thread--not to whine and bemoan the fact that my user ID gmail belongs to someone else.

When I selected my user name, I wasn't looking for "original," but an ID that was descriptive of what I do. There aren't any other uses for my name.

On the other hand, defaultuser's ID could have multiple uses having to do with computers, so it seems to be more generic.

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[cdboard]

Oh the irony!

Domain sellers discovering that their free gmail address is taken. Just send them a message asking how much they want for the address.

that is funny. soon the owner of the email address will contact the domainer with an offer to sell the email address. along with a reasonable price, included will be some informative and helpful comments about how having the email address will help sales, SEO, branding, and internet business presence.

 

[DU]

The point is, defaultuser, we're worried that a scammer might be doing damage under our user ID's. I have used Ms Domainer for three years and have the domain to match.

But it is just a "userid". Do you own this on DNF, TheDomains, WordPress, Hotmail, Yahoo, Namepros, Amazon, Twitter, Tumblr, Posterous, Facebook, AdultFriendFinder, FourSquare, SecondLife...

I understand your concern.
I understand that there is a benefit to controlling your identity.
I agree that you should get the main sites as much as possible.

But the internet is one giant mesh of hundreds of namespaces that you can't control. Admittedly gmail is a popular and large one.

But there are more effective ways to scam as you and I think that the level of concern is higher than warranted. It's an opinion :red:

DU.

 

[altb]

those are used for spamming, not scamming

people in low-wage countries create gmail/yahoo/hotmail accounts (semi)manually, then those emails accounts are sold in bulk to spammers

those screennames are harvested on the forums or wherever by bots because they have a higher value than names with random letters and numbers

 

[snoopinc]

I secured my username a few years ago.

 

[tricolorro]

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Defend Your ID and Reputation!!!

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:hi:

For anyone interested I found 5 more Domainer User IDs
taken in gmail accounts by the same person using the
Recovery email address I discovered earlier:
••••••@h••••••.com

The 5 are:
Seven Mile (Frank Schilling)
Fusible
DNJournal (Ron Jackson)
Abel Arif
Domain Name News (Frank Michlick)
--
--

Password assistance for [email protected]

How can Google contact you about recovering your account?
Email to ••••••@h••••••.com
--

Password assistance for [email protected]

How can Google contact you about recovering your account?
Email to ••••••@h••••••.com
--

Password assistance for [email protected]

How can Google contact you about recovering your account?
Email to ••••••@h••••••.com
--

Password assistance for [email protected]

How can Google contact you about recovering your account?
Email to ••••••@h••••••.com
--

Password assistance for [email protected]

How can Google contact you about recovering your account?
Email to ••••••@h••••••.com
--

 

[Abdel]

Nobody stole mine.
I am nothing....NOTHING!!

Do you want to sell it? lol

 

[HC82]

Only amateurs use free webmail email accounts. I can't recall a domainer ever emailing me from anything other than a domain based email. Simply seeing @gmail.com would be a red flag that the person I was dealing with was, at best, inexperienced.

 

[Ms Domainer]

Only amateurs use free webmail email accounts. I can't recall a domainer ever emailing me from anything other than a domain based email. Simply seeing @gmail.com would be a red flag that the person I was dealing with was, at best, inexperienced.

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Domainers understand this, but an end user not familiar with the industry might not be aware.

I have sold domains to end users using gmail, but now I have changed my sales email address to a domain-based email.

I did do a search on my User ID gmail and found nothing suspicious.

defaultuser, I realize that we can't wield significant control over the internet, nor would I want to try; however, warranted or not, gmail is respected by a lot of people, and I just believe that due dilligence is required, perhaps a once-a-month search on the user name.

Yahoo! and Hotmail/Live must be considered less desirable because I was able to secure these addresses.

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[Erdy]

My username is my first name used by hundreds of people on the Internet. So it was long gone before I started domaining. However I checked my website name and it is taken:

I took two screenshots:
http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/9344/email.gif
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/3645/secquestion.gif

The recovery email is this:
******@w********.lv

The .lv extension isn't so common. Maybe this could be a new clue to find this person.

 

[[email protected]]

Wondering if it could be because the hosting service or register might prescreen email and not let u see an email that has an offer in fear of losing business ?? Any thoughts?

 

[DomainMagnate]

hey guys, I use an email from my domain, so this didn't bother this much.

I think that a reasonable possibility is that some people simply create huge amounts of gmail accounts and scraped a list of usernames from some forums or other sites.

The 'h' likely belongs to hotmail.com so it's also possible that these belong to different accounts. It does make sense to use a hotmail account as a backup for gmail.

The more sinister possibility is also very likely though

 

[platey]

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SiberForum,

Why a PM?

I already gave you two examples. I leave it up to the rest of you to check your own user names.

Why not check your own ID to see if someone has claimed it at the various freebie emails?

And then post your result here.

If someone has snagged an email/gmail address in your identity, there isn't much you can do about it EXCEPT let people know that it isn't YOU.

Yes, I should have claimed my ID gmail long ago--definitely my bad.

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of the two eg gmail or yahoo which would you say is the better email provider? just a thought

the only reason i ask is that i bought a .com domain and registered its gmail equivalent

 

[Name Trader]

@platey - gMail, has by far the best spam protection on the planet. Infrastructure rock solid. Why do you think most of the discussion has been about gMail. Because it is the premier free email account

 

[platey]

@platey - gMail, has by far the best spam protection on the planet. Infrastructure rock solid. Why do you think most of the discussion has been about gMail. Because it is the premier free email account

music to my ears lol

 

[alcy]

@platey - gMail, has by far the best spam protection on the planet. Infrastructure rock solid. Why do you think most of the discussion has been about gMail. Because it is the premier free email account

alcy has been taken for ages. so I can't say someone is squatting me.
you would need ids like "435j54j35k4" to get some conclusive evidence here.
or access to account creation dates.. to compare.

i love gmail.
and chrome
everything google touches is golddddddd.
they are like the artiste of technology.

 

[platey]

so the latest global trend at the moment involving amazon and google? lol