This policy change will be in force for 1st June 2008. Key features of the policy are as follows:

• It will not be allowable to register a domain name for the sole purpose of resale or transfer to a third party
• Registrants will not be able to transfer their domain name for the first 6 months after the initial registration (this does not apply to domain names that have been renewed or previously transferred)
• After 6 months, registrants will be able to offer their domain name for sale/transfer by any means (eg. by listing the domain name for sale on a domain brokerage website, advertising the domain name for sale in a newspaper, or contacting a prospective buyer directly)
• The new registrant must comply with normal eligibility and allocation rules
• Registrant transfers will be processed by the registrar of record using a standard transfer form, and the registrar may charge a transfer fee
• Parties to a transfer will be asked to disclose the sale method and price, on a voluntary and confidential basis, so that auDA may collect aggregated statistical data to improve access to market information for buyers and sellers.

There are some interesting clauses in there. Not allowing domain names to be registered for the sole purpose of resale for one. If a site contains advertising but also a link for potential buyers, would that be in violation? The 6 month hold would also seem a barrier, but this only applies to new registrations. These will no doubt be topics of interest for the first ever Australian TRAFFIC conference in November.

** Uluru Sunset by ernieski, one of many artists who make their work under a Creative Commons license at Flickr - thank you!

Tags: Australia, Australian, AU domains, Australian Domains, auDA, TRAFFIC, Domain Conferences

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Tags: Domaining, Domains, Forums

For some time now, it has been accepted that older domains are treated with greater trust by the search engines. This makes them easier to rank in the search engine results. New domains, in contrast, are presumed guilty, until proven innocent. This proof will usually come from time, once they age a little or incoming links from other trusted domains.

This is a mechanism to stop spam in the search engines. Domains used for this purpose are usually considered disposable and rarely make it through 1-2 years without getting flagged. Therefore any domain older than this period, often referred to as the sandbox, is more likely to be trusted from then on.

This new patent application from Microsoft adds another twist, by also ranking domains based upon the ages of domains which link to those domains. As usual with Bill’s work, this is essential reading for anyone involved in the domain or SEO/SEM industry. For domainers, this patent shows added value in your old domains, which should be reflected in the price.

However search engines are always looking for ways to stop trust being bought, rather than earned, so attempt to find ways to wipe the slate clean after domain expiries, purchases or swaps. They have been largely successful in implimenting this policy on expired gTLDs (COM/NET/ORG/INFO/BIZ). Country code domains (ccTLDs) are harder to police, as these Registries do not yet offer automated access to records.

These attempts has been strongly criticised by those who sell domains or web properties as they believe domains, like any other business, should not be penalised for changing owners.

Tags: Patents, Patent, Microsoft, Domain Age, Tutorials

My favourite here was OnlineHelpdesk.com for $2000. Online help desks are an essential part of customer support for any large company operating on the internet. As you can see from these results in Google, it’s a vibrant niche with many competitors. A domain like this could give someone an edge at a very low cost.

I was also surprised to see NetCurrency.com go for just $167. PayPal, WebMoney, e-Gold and Google are all players in the billion-dollar internet payment industry. Internet currencies are also seeing sustained growth in emerging economies, such as India, China and Russia where credit cards penetration is low.

Below are the top sales our system highlighted. See what you missed over the week (you must be logged in to see the bids/sale page)

• SpyBlockers.com - $2247 (9 bids)
• DogsPlace.com - $2236 (11 bids)
• OnlineHelpdesk.com - $2000 (9 bids)
• SilverTrout.com - $2000 5 bids)
• WirelessGraphics.com - $1009 (20 bids)
• AidsHospital.com - $970 (13 bids)
• GolfStrap.com - $345 (3 bids)
• NetCurrency.com - $167 (13 bids)
• OffshoreConsult.com.com - $60 (1 bids)
• CheckLight.com - $60 (1 bids)

Click here to sign up at the Tucows Action Platform or grab the RSS feeds

Tags: Tucows, Auctions,, Auction, Results,, Domain, Auctions

ICANN has released an advisory on domain transfers between Registrars to clarify their rules on this matter. Some Registrars have been refusing transfers for 60 days after WHOIS changes were made or refusing transfers once a domain had entered the Auto-Renew Grace Period. Here are the rules in question:

1. Registrars are prohibited from denying a domain name transfer request based on non-payment of fees for pending or future registration periods during the Auto-Renew Grace Period

2. A registrant change to Whois information is not a valid basis for denying a transfer request.

Hopefully some of the Registrars abusing these rules will now take note, but if not, you know where to point them.

Update: Ross Radar has written some notes on Tucows’ response to this advisory over at their blog.

Tags: ICANN, Registrars, Domains

Below are the top sales that our system discovered. Read the list and cry at the ones you missed.

• WorldGreatest.com - $900
• Webbex.com - $900
• CyberVegas.com - $800
• PersonalDietProgram - $600
• MortgageArrangement.com - $253
• YouWillSee.com - $200
• Branzoll.com - $95
• SomaTea.com - $66

Click here to sign up at the Tucows Action Platform or grab the RSS feeds

Tags: Tucows, Auctions, Results

The anonymous nature of the internet has always made it difficult to work out the age of people you are dealing with. While bad grammar can give clues, a literate teenager with a half-decent cover story can easily pass themselves off as an adult. The temptation is strong, as the world of domaining is a lucrative playground for the entrepreneurial youngster. One such underage domainer reports that he has had over $25’000 in successful transactions.

The question is though how many underage domainers are there? There have been some high profile characters such as Jordan Schwartz, who made a name for himself flipping several high end domains at the tender age of 17 but these posts suggest there are far more outside the spotlight. This is hardly surprising, the internet is a young person’s environment, with most teenagers possessing skills and understanding far beyond their parents. As Adam Strong writes, “The youth, the Domainer 2.0, that’s the future of domains.”

The industry seems to have turned a blind eye to the issue so far, citing admiration for the entrepreneurial spirit of these youngsters. However more cynical observers might suggest that the real reason is the low valuation of these teenagers’ labor and assets, which proves attractive to the older domainers. As many underage domainers do not have access to PayPal or banking facilities they are forced to make more complicated arrangements, involving domain gift tokens and Ebay purchases. Understanding their disadvantage, they often cut deals that favour the buyer as they attempt to cash out their work.

The dramatic increases in domain values has raised important questions about this practice. Far from some extra pocket money, some underage domainers are now negotiating deals worth $X,XXXs. In the eyes of the law though, they have not passed the age of majority, so can not legally enter into any binding contracts. That means there can be little legal recourse for the buyer or seller when a domain deal goes bad. Further to this, the fact these minors can not enter into a contract prohibits them from even owning a domain name, let alone trading in them.

GoDaddy states:

You represent and warrant that You are 18 years of age or older, or that You have an agent authorized by law to represent You who is 18 years of age or older who is entering into this Agreement on Your behalf.

Moniker and Tucows both have clauses requesting that the registrant should be of “legal age to enter into this Agreement”. By definition that would exclude anyone under 18, or the appropriate age of majority in the country/state where they reside.

This risk is not just one way though. As the young domainer is a minor in the eyes of the law, liability for their failed domain deals could fall to their parents or guardians, who had little idea of the business their son or daughter was engaged in. They also face a more frightening prospect from the domain registrars, as they are entitled to seize or delete their entire portfolio for breech of contract. This fact alone may explain why so many wish to remain under the radar.

While exclusive communities such as TRAFFIC have avoided this problem through selective membership, public domaining forums have naturally attracted their fair share of teenage users. This recent scandal has made DNForums examine their policy towards underage domainers and they are holding a poll on the topic. Although they ask for a payment from the user before they can buy or sell domains, they do not currently have any age checks built into the process.

As the domaining industry attempts to legitimize itself, it seems unlikely they can accommodate a group that exists outside the law. However, the temptation is to leave this issue running and fail to self-regulate, perpetuating the idea of the “wild west” of domaining. I hope that there is some substantial guidelines released over the next few months to show what role, if any, underage domainers can play in the industry.

Tags: underage domainers, dnforum, scam, domain theft

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Tags: sedo, secondary domains

I wrote an article last year for Jim Boykin’s blog, entitled “What Does Google Know about Your Domain Names”. My theory was that Google became a Registrar in order to obtain WHOIS data from the Registries.

I believe Google has built or is building a tool to analyse domain names. The API access they were given as a Registrar allows them to carry out the level of automated queries they needed for this. I would also go further and suggest this tool is building up a historical picture of each domain through regular scraping of their WHOIS records.

As you can imagine this tool could be very useful for Google. It would allow them to track the age of domain names and connect likely networks and portfolios. They would see when a domain name changed ownership and allow them to adjust the value of that domain in their engine.

At the time this was speculation but this week the concept has become reality in the form of Registrant Search.

The system is built on the back of the DomainTools.com database, which has been busily collecting WHOIS records and logging changes since 1995. For some time now users have been able to view historical records on a selected domain and view name server changes logged. However this week they took the next logical step and linked the records together.

For a fee you can buy a report which will give you all domain records currently and ever registered to a person or company, as logged by their system. As you see here, we can obtain 314,103 records for Google Inc. and 379,367 for Yahoo! Inc. giving us a unique insight into the domain portfolios for those companies.

However it gets scarier when you consider that searches can also be made on individuals. We have 465 records under the name “Danny Sullivan” and 1,556 recorded entries for “Michael Gray”. Although all but the first letter of the domain names are obscured, I recognised the domains under some of my profiles.

The power of this tool is that it can associate domains, even if they have subsequently been sold on or hidden with WHOIS privacy. One weak link in your WHOIS protection could reveal your entire portfolio. For example if a domain was previously registered in your name and this then moved to a company entity. Both records would be recovered by the search - tying the two together for anyone investigating.

There is also a huge opportunity to discover personal data, including names, addresses and telephone numbers of users who had failed to use WHOIS privacy at an early stage of their domain buying career. As some long-time internet users have pointed out, domain privacy was not available as a service until recently.

Why are people worried?

Apart from the general invasion of privacy, commenters in this thread have put forward specific concerns about the new tool.

If you combined the domain ownership list and the known prices domain were sold at, you end up with a financial valuation of a company or individual. Some of these run into the $millions. Critics have argued that this information could be used by blackmailers or within legal disputes. This data can amount to having your bank statements publicly available.

For domainers involved in UDP (Uniform Dispute Policy) disputes, this information could be used against them in a court of law. Typo and trademark registrations were not as much of a concern in the early days but these cases could be cited as evidence of previous infractions or bad faith.

Individuals who registered politically motivated domains or ones that they might find embarrassing. The domains we register tell people a lot about us, and which sites we may have operated. Some of these we may wish to remain secret.

The domain portfolios of businesses can be checked by their competitors. This would give useful information on their future strategy and list all their current website properties.

There have been some questions about the legality of selling this information. While WHOIS searches are publicly available they often come with clauses which prohibit electronic scraping and re-distributing. Nominet for example have the following clause:

Use of WHOIS and data: You may not:

re-package, compile, re-distribute or re-use any or all of the WHOIS database or data (unless you are a lawful user using an insubstantial part);

use any or all of the WHOIS data for advertising or as part of a process of identifying entities, names or addresses for future advertising activity of any sort (any such use may also be unlawful under the Data Protection Act 1998);

Verisign, the operator of .COM gives themselves more room for maneuver by suggesting this can be overcome by ‘prior written consent’. It’s unclear though whether DomainTools has such consent to compile and resell this data.

Jay Westerdal, CEO of DomainTools is asking for feedback on this new tool and has already received over 125 replies. The response has been overwhelmingly negative, with many “>industry leaders joining the calls for this tool to be taken down. However, as has been pointed out, even if this is taken out of public hands there is little to stop them selling the data. The more cynical among us might suggest the publicity surrounding this tool will provide a rich supply of private clients.

One of these clients could even be Google, should they be following similar lines. This data could be sold or leased to help them ‘catch-up’ on the historical records they may have missed.

This episode has been a wake up call for all domain owners to apply WHOIS privacy to their domains. Historical snapshots do not give you the luxury of applying this at a later stage. Even if you do not need it now, you may thank yourself several years down the line.

Tags: DomainTools, Registrant Search, Nominet, Verisign, Google, Jay Westerdal, Privacy, WHOIS, domains, domaining

The usual complaint is that people are carrying out domain research and return some days or hours later to find the domain mysteriously purchased. In some reports this can even happen between the availability lookup and payment screens. As Daily Domainer suggests, an interception used to take days - now it can be completed within minutes.

Last week an associate of mine was bulk-checking 200+ generic typo domains through a software that shall remain unnamed for now. All of the domains were available. But less than 2 minutes later, more than 50 of the domains had been registered by a number of different offshore companies from the Bahamas.

There is no way this could be a coincidence. And if you read the more recent comments in the above mentioned article, it’s clearer than ever before that there are severe leaks somewhere that allow domain tasters to compromise your domain searches and steal your domain ideas.

While this is easy enough if you set up your own domain availability tool, these accusations are being leveled at some of the best known Registrars in the industry. The questions people are asking is who is involved and have they sold this information willingly or is their security compromised?

According to the AP Newswire, the Security and Stability Advisory Committee of ICANN have termed the practice “domain name front running” and likened it to a stock broker buying or selling shares ahead of a client’s trade, in anticipation of a movement in price.

Although they have no proven cases they want to stop this this, “perception from evolving to accepted wisdom” and have launched an investigation into the complaints.

Officially they have suggested this phenomenon may be caused by computer viruses, unscrupulous third-party sites or coincidence rather than pointing the finger at Registrars. While it maybe hard for ICANN to prove anything through this investigation, the extra attention may pressure those involved to stop before they are publicly exposed.

If you have information that can be useful to this investigation you are asked to contact ICANN. Details can be found on their PDF advisory. They have also called for the domaining community to suggest measures that could restrict or stop this practice. Personally I would force any registrar, registration agent or domain tool that sells or stores user lookup data to disclose this in their privacy policy, that would be a start.

Tags: ICANN, domains, domaining, domain snatching, domain_name front running