My DNS Was Stolen | Hacker News Reader

My DNS Was Stolen

5 pointsd-elete9 comments

I registered the domain www.facebo-k.com through namecheap. They have taken my domain hostage, and I haven't used it for anything illegal. Here is a letter that was sent to me after I contacted them about the issue.

Legal@namecheap.com<legal@namecheap.com> Thu, Apr 1, 2021 at 8:25 AM To: [edited] Cc: "legal@namecheap.com" <legal@namecheap.com>

HEllo,

Thank you for reaching out to us regarding your domain. Unfortunately, Namecheap was legally required to lock your domain (along with others) due to allegations from Facebook, who alleges that you and others are using the domain(s) for abusive purposes. In addition, we were required to put these domains in the custody of the court. This was not an action that we wished nor wanted to take. It was forced upon us by Facebook and allegations it made about the domain(s) in a pending suit it brought against Namecheap.

If you believe your use of the domain is non-infringing or that it was included in the lawsuit by mistake, we will forward any information or evidence you provide us along to Facebook’s lawyers to see if it will agree to remove your domain from the lawsuit.

If you would like to challenge Facebook’s allegations and the corresponding domain lock in Court, you or your attorney may make an appearance in the lawsuit, Facebook, Inc. et al. v. Namecheap, Inc. et al., Case No. 2:20-cv-00470-GMS, which is pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona.

We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your trust in us.

Thank you,

Namecheap Legal. Namecheap, Inc. E: legal@namecheap.com, W: namecheap.com

On 4/1/2021 12:11 AM, [edited] wrote: > I received an alert about my domain facebo-k.com and would like to > know the issue at hand.

I'd like to clarify a few things here. I work for a domain name protection and domain name recovery service (we recover stolen domain names and protect them from getting stolen).

The "DNS" was not stolen, the DNS is something totally different than the 'domain name'. DNS can be hacked, but it cannot be 'stolen'. Domain names are stolen. So the title should have been "My Domain was stolen".

In this situation, your domain name wasn't stolen, it was most likely challenged through the URS, which is a "faster" version of the UDRP (domain name dispute). Domain names with trademarks or names that are similar to trademarks can be disputed.

In this situation, it appears that you registered a domain name that is similar to a trademark owned by Facebook. Since they've referenced a particular case in that has been filed in Arizona, then you're probably being sued because you registered that domain name.

It's not a stolen domain name, the ownership of the domain name is being disputed.

Since it appears that legal action may be (or may already have been) taken against you, the owner of the domain name, I recommend that you seek the advice of a qualified domain name attorney.

Fairly obvious passing off and/or typosquatting IMHO. I dislike FB and all its works, but I'd say that you are in the wrong here unless you can make a really good case that you have a legit reason to use exactly this form of name.

Typosquatting is not illegal regardless, and trademark protections do not extend to every conceivable variation of a companies trademark. All they can do is throw lawyers at it and hope you don't fight. This is still theft of the domain, and at a minimum they need to be compensated for the domain if it will not be returned.

I'm not perticularly concerned about FB being hurt, though it may feel otherwise. And FB may also be obliged in law to be seen to protect its trademarks or lose them.

But I am worried about the public being scammed by passing off or typosquatting, etc.

FWIW someone is using the ID (reg number, physical address, domain name variant) of one of my companies right now to try to rip off the public, claiming to be a registered investment business. And I've had similar things happen in the past. This is not theoretical. Just creating such a domain for confusuion has few reasonable uses and many bad ones.

I don't understand how they could just take it away if you haven't done anything abusive. So much for innocent until proven guilty.

Obvious phish. That would never have even made it past our prescreening algos and if it did it would have thrown a flag and the next person to look at would have nuked it and closed your account.

File under "so don't do that, then".

No, it was not "stolen", nor have they (Namecheap) "taken it hostage".

"we were required to put these domains in the custody of the court" - which is something quite different.

You may well have a legitimate gripe with Facebook, but Namecheap are simply following the orders of a court of law. What other action do you think Namecheap could take here?

Good to know that it takes a lawsuit to get the attention of folks at namecheap. namecheap enables all kinds of bad behavior and makes minimal effort when there are legitimate complaints.

I seriously considered writing a spam filter that filtered out domains that were recently registered with namecheap.

yeah, this makes sense, especially all the power they've consolidated, hope they unionize already.

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