Ask HN: Are domain registrars gaming the system? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are domain registrars gaming the system?

19 pointsosrec17 comments

I recently found a nice 3 letter domain under the .mx tld. I tried visiting the domain but it wasn't registered, with no whois either. Upon trying to register it with Namecheap, I got as far the checkout, entered my credit card details, but the transaction failed. It wasn't my card, but the domain itself was apparently unavailable.

I then revisit the web address, and suddenly there appears a domain company's landing page with a message saying the domain is for sale and it gave me a UK number to call. Intrigued, I call the number (it was around 3 am in the UK) and it connected me to a call center in Eastern Europe, where the operator let slip that the call center belonged to Namecheap. This made me a little suspicious that perhaps Namecheap deliberately failed my transaction, registered the domain in order to get me to pay much above the standard price of the domain.

So I want to know: (a) has anyone experienced something similar? And (b) is this legally permissible? It sort of reminds me of front running in the stock market where the market makers are taking advantage of their privileged position...

Hi guys - I work for Namecheap. We don't own any call centers. We don't even offer phone support. It sounds to me like the domain may have been premium and we accidentally reported it as available. Can you check the whois and see when it was registered?

Namecheap has and never will do this - period.

It could just be that they cache availability data, then do a cache invalidation on purchase to make sure. I see lots of inconsistencies between what different vendors consider registered.

I guess check whois before visiting any registration site is the lesson here.

Namecheap is a good brand in my mind but if I find out they do this it'll be disheartening.

Yup, I always, always, always simply check for domain availability via pinging the TLD’s registry directly using the whois command in my terminal. I’ve been burned like this before by checking on another registrar (I forget which so don’t want to make accusations) and not getting past the checkout process like OP. And with the whois command you don’t need to worry whether the registrar you’re using to search sells the TLD you’re looking for or not, which is a nice plus.

There’s absolutely no reason to ask a third party domain registrar whether a domain already exists. People need to spread the word more!

I remember suggesting a sick domain to my friend for his new website just a year ago. he purchased it once and never really used it. so I recently I decided that I will buy it for myself. But now that domain name is premium domain and I have to pay 700+ USD extra to buy it. he used GoDaddy.

Registrars picking up expired domains is definitely a thing although, perhaps, a touch more ethical since someone else would likely pick it up anyway?

How did you check the whois? Through an online interface or i.e. by running whois through terminal on mac?

I think I just used bash.

you shouldnt be using that domain system. In fact a good question is, where can you go to search for domains and be relatively "clean" from these tricks?

I use bluehost.com and gandi.net in the past and i generally didn't have this issue.

I know for a fact Godaddy used to do this, I don't know if they still do (but would assume so). If you searched for domains and/or added them to the cart but did not purchase right away, they had their little known team of reviewers that constantly checked the list of all domains people were interested in purchasing. The ones that were deemed valuable were registered by an affiliated entity and offered in their auctions. My source for this information is a person who used to work there.

This sounds totally unethical to me. Is someone regulating this? Have they ever been fined for such underhand tactics?

I think there are some ICANN policy preventing/limiting this. However, that generally only applies to gTLDs. The domain in question .mx is a country code domain. So ICANN does not have the same level of say on certain things.

-edit- Also registrars and registries have probably spend more time interacting with ICANN, and probably push for policies that are advantageous to them.

Wow, why is this not made a bigger deal of? I mean this is outright market manipulation, is it not?

Countries, can construct their own policies for their domains. Sometimes they omit things or allow things that other registries prohibit. They also may require things like being a resident ect...

However, quickly looking at some ICANN's policies take look at number 3. Wheather any of this applies to .mx depends on how the policies for that ccTLD are setup.

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/approved-with-specs-20...

Also if you are thinking of filing a complaint keep in mind ICANN is quite bureaucratic so nothing may happen or take ages.

-edit- if the domain in question is important I suggest talking to someone well versed in the minutia of all this.

So domain front running is a thing (I actually coined the term yesterday without knowing it was already a thing!): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running

According to the article, it seems it's not very well regulated.

Although, I will add; it's new to me. Godaddy has been known to front run domains. This would be the first time I have heard of it from namecheap.

I've seen this happen a couple of times with Namecheap in the last 3 months. The last case was literally yesterday (as I explained in the original post)

Must be a pretty recent thing if so that's kinda sad. I would say one of the biggest problems is ICANN, and from my understanding was it was supposed to eventually move to where those in charge were openly voted on, but that has never happened. Sadly, ICANN is the defacto DNS root and some their decisions are annoying.

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