February 20th, 2008
by Sunil Setty
I’m not into the whole domain name scene/industry, but I’ve often used Network Solutions (NSI) when researching domain availability. Even though I don’t ultimately purchase domains from them, I like their interface and I trust that no one is hiding behind the entry box ready to steal my ideas. Or so I thought.
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Yesterday, after I found a couple good domains via NSI I immediately went to my main registrar Namecheap – I don’t use NSI as they charge way too much – and added some funds in my account (I was running low), entered the domain names to purchase and then was floored to find out that they were suddenly taken.
I clicked the “whois” on both and to my amazement they had been registered by Network Solutions, starting Tuesday the 19th for one year and marked with the “status: clientHold”!
No f’ing way…
Obviously NSI snatched up and registered my domains right after I search for them. Those unethical, slimy bastards! Well, not quite.
After much anger and some digging (and a closer look at the front page of NSI’s web site) I found out that since the start of the year Network Solutions decided to hold or “reserve” any available dot com domains searched for by users on its site for four days (not the full year as listed in the whois, whew) before releasing them back to the public for normal purchase on a different registrar. Of course (and this is what NSI hopes) if you can’t wait the four days you’ll have to fork over top-dollar and pay NSI $35 bucks for the same freakin’ domain you can get for under $10 at most registrars.
What a bunch of garbage…
The company defends its new policy claiming that it is protecting the consumer by keeping those available domains safe during that four day period, allowing the consumer time, if needed, to make a decision on the purchase. They also say that it keeps a lid on “domain tasters”, something I won’t get into here.
NSI also argues that their policy prevents “front running”, that is the art of people who monitor public domain searches made on registrar sites in effort to register them before the consumer does, and then sell them to the consumer at a higher price or use them for other monetary gain.
Now that, I can somewhat understand. And I’ve actually heard of this happening but only some pretty shady registrar sites, and not on NSI. However, aren’t they now basically admitting that they have this problem of front running on their site, hence the need for “protection”? Sure sounds like it. And sounds like even more garbage and a way for NSI to make a quick buck.
And just a though, what if a malicious programmer was able to cull from the domain registry database all those NSI domains marked “clientHold”, again meaning they were recently searched on NSI, I’m really not sure if that’s even possible to do but if it is no telling how much damage could be done to the domaining landscape.
Bottom line is, unless you are already a client or you just like paying $35 for things that cost under $10, don’t use Network Solutions for your domain researching. Simple as that. I know I won’t be anymore. As for my domains I reckon I can wait it out…
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