Network Solutions Using Questionable Tactic to Sell More Domain Names

Were godaddy accused of this last year also Mike?

Michael,

I experienced this action with Network Solutions this week when registering country specific domains that my “discount registrar” doesn’t offer. Network Solutions charges an additional $12/year to forward. Nice scam - $(35+12)=$47.

That’s a very dirty tactic. But I guess competitors could do the same.

The same tactic is used by cheap search engines to register misspelled names of domains. They simply keep several million dollars held in earnest money at the registrar, register a 500,000+ domain names at a time, and see what hits over the next 5 days. 5 days later, register a different batch of 500,000+ domains to see what sticks. The whole practice stinks, and needs regulation.

F Network Solutions in the A. That’s one company that needs to die, badly.

PS: God Daddy - nice typo

Damn, that’s nasty! I’ve always wondered about this when I’m searching for a new domain name. You would think that you could trust a well-know company such as this!

It works. I just searched for: networksolutionssucksbigdonkeyballs.com on their site and Voila: http://networksolutionssucksbigdonkeyballs.com

Isn’t this just a modified version of ‘domain kiting’ / ‘domain tasting’:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_kiting

Network Solutions’ fees are outrageous and the only way they can get revenue is relying on unsophisticated users going for dirty tactics such as this.

This is the best reason so far, in addition to the fees, NOT to use Network Solutions, and to let the world know not to use them either.

My buddy like to search using services like this, and I’ve told him not, but he keeps on doing it. I told him “do not search unless you are going to buy”. Otherwise I just “search” by typing the URL in directly, if it’s not there, then consider a later purchase. Kind of obvious they would pull this crap. Domain squatters are still as sketchy as the web was in the late 90’s.

All domain registrars do this. Must be fun to be in a business where this is what you have to do make money.

just reading that makes me feel dirty. i doubt verisign cares very much, as it still leads to real registrations.

however, if they’re providing free domain search capabilities it does seem logical (but not very ethical) for them to try and get the cost back by making you register it through them.

ps: /usr/bin/whois is your friend.

-mike

*Excuse the language*

Those sneaky money obsessed anti consumer bastards.

Most of the corporate America is like this, not just Network Solutions. From Banks, to cell phone companies, hospitals , insurance companies …. you name it !

@ babyjesus: You think forcing a user to buy a domain name through them is logical because they’re providing “free domain search capabilities?” Please. Google provides free search and doesn’t force anything on me in return.

Mike, thanks for exposing this scam for what it is. It reminds me of a company here in canada called the “Domain name registry of canada” that sends out “renewal” forms by mail trying to trick people into switching to them without realizing it.

From what I know, this story was quasi-broken a few days ago, at http://www.billhartzer.com/pag.....ty-lookup/

Some concrete examples listed there as well.

What NS is doing is wrong. It’s a sleazy move. I don’t use them and I’m thankful I don’t.

@ George Favvas: Not exactly. But I consider them trying to get their money back for providing a free service as logical. They aren’t forcing you to use their service for your searching. It’s not how I’d conduct a business with hopes of repeat customers, but it sure doesn’t surprise me.

ps: google is forcing ads and other targeted content on you to make up for that free service too. god only knows what else they’re doing with your demo info…

-mike

I have always wondered if this tatic was being done or attempted, thanks for exposing this, lets hope that godaddy doesn’t go that way.

THAT is B.S. they should not be able to do that… all this does is increase the barrier of entry for the little guys!!!!!

Is there anything we can do to stop them? Michael, you have a law degree… can anything be done?

-Ryan

I believe I was a “victim” of this when I registered my original domain woodmarvels.com, I searched for both singular and plural but only bought the plural. The next day, I decided that hey… I should buy the singular as well and it was registered by a third party somewhere. Ironically, after reading about this on Webmasters World, I searched and the singular domain was yet again available.

ICANN is as effective controlling the internet as a 90 year old man is with impotence. The root of these “net problems” like kiting, front-loading etc can all be traced back to their absolute lack of leadership… they couldn’t be any more useless - time to send them their pink papers and rethink some basic fundamentals.

Jon
http://buzvia.com - Share Influence

This amazes me…
They deserve all the bad press that they can be given

i definitely think the tech community should boycott network solutions. They have acted anti-consumer for years.

I have had so many bad experiences with them and I only have a handful of domains with them.

I have hundreds with Godaddy and have very few negative experiences.

this is very horrible. it makes me want to set up a bot that just searches domain names 24 hours a day to F with them… really, i can’t believe it.

I use netsol.com to search for domains all the time and I always have this funny feeling when i do it that someone is watching… now the feeling is justified. wow.

You’ll start seeing the community create little bots to flood them with bogus requests.

And it seems for good measure they block you from doing a whois lookup after you do a domain name search!

I searched for the domain name at NS and then used the godaddy whois search.

——————————————–

Welcome to the Network Solutions Registrar WHOIS Server.

The IP address from which you have visited the Network Solutions Registrar WHOIS
database is contained within a list of IP addresses that may have failed
to abide by Network Solutions’ WHOIS policy. Failure to abide by this policy can
adversely impact our systems and servers, preventing the processing of
other WHOIS requests.

To see the Network Solutions WHOIS Policy, click on or copy and paste the following
URL into your browser:

http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jhtml

If you feel that you have received this message in error, please contact us at:
whoisquery@networksolutions.com and include the following information:

What a dirty business. I hate researching website domains only to find they are stagnant pages with the big Network Solutions logo at the top.

Thanks for the heads up on Domain Registrations. I also think its funny when I search on Register they say they will give me time to come back and get the domain I just searched for….in the mean time I go over to GoDaddy with Crcard in hand saving 60%.

Isn’t this considered cybersquatting and therefore we all should be protected under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act?

I’d like to see a guest author come to TC and discuss this sort of behavior. As well as a review of Web Hosts/Domain Registers and their behavior; good, bad and ugly. I’m about to go shopping for a Web Host and I would love to here some feedback on your recommendations.

WOW…
WOW …
WOW …..

IS THERE ANYTHING PEOPLE WOULD NOT DO FOR A BUCK or 35

You shouldn’t have given these any coverage. Now their search engine rank will go up for queries for domain name search. I never even heard of them before you wrote about it.

@30

I agree…not that I have not heard of them but it’s as if we all are being forced to transact with them. I say just take the domain search and business elsewhere.

At this rate they will soun windup in the DEADPOOL

Is there any legal recourse against it?

It looks like the fake registrations have already begun …

fuck-you-netsol.com was registered two days ago and delegated to RESERVEDDOMAINNAME.COM

I was “victimized” by NetworkSolutions when I purchased my first 30 domains (at the time, I was new to the industry, and I thought they were the only game in town. Ya, I was a sucker!)

In short … I hate NetworkSolutions.

Since then, I’ve *transfered* all of those domains to GoDaddy, and I’ve subsequently purchased *several thousand more* through GoDaddy instead.

(Um … don’t worry, I’m NOT SQUATTING on them! I’m actually making them available to thousands of people who otherwise would not have a really cool domain name.)

Sneaky. If eNom and GD started doing this too, could domain registrations grind to a halt?

The thing is not to do a search on their site otherwise it means waiting for five days to get that domain name.

Now I know where to avoid searching.

Exactly why I would use a site like http://www.SwiftDomainSearch.com to research and find domain names before I head out to a regsitrar to actually buy them.

@38 nice spam

Try internic’s own whois - http://www.internic.net/whois.html

…otherwise, the command line whois in linux

I was happy as hell when I finally got my domains off of NS. Pain or no pain with the process (and it was painful), once there were clear alternatives to NS I was out of there and I couldn’t be happier.

This? This is off the charts.

Thanks for the information, I’ll switch everything over to go daddy - even my webhosting.

It is a dirty tactic. I will not use network solution in the futher.

—
http://www.bywifi.com — Mobile Transcoding of Videos and Web Pages for Mobile Phone and PDA

We had similar bad experience with a company called UltraRPM aka Metapredict A domain name was gone after doing a search, but it was claimed they used spyware to detect your search etc

Michael, that’s excellent that you wrote something about this. This is only one more ridiculous practice by Netsol which does nothing but indicate that they think domain registrants are idiots. They are the most inconvenient, customer-unfriendly registrants when it comes to using their interface… In addition to this heir approach to business includes forcing you to go through about 10 screens just to register a domain so that they can keep asking you if you need stuff that you know you don’t need or want. Every time. For years now. Like clockwork. Other REAL features such as forwarding/masking, etc. are free with companies like GoDaddy, but Netsol charges for them. GoDaddy (and its Wild West affiliates) have ten times more domains of mine than Netsol for those reasons.

Rob
http://www.bitrealty.com

@8, others

i’m not seeing this effect… Searched for “netsolisapieceofbunk.com” on Netsol and its still available at Gotdaddy as well.

What am I missing here??

I always thought whois.sc/domaintools could make a killing by using this strategy.

Whats with the domain registration companies?

NetSol clearly doesn’t get it… they haven’t gotten it or been competent whatsoever since they lost their monopoloy rights. They’re management is way to focused on near-term revenue ($35/year registration, gimics like above) instead of running a legit company. You’d think its pretty clear these days please your customers, be open, have a clean/legit service, and you can do very well (google, FB, etc).

GoDaddy is ok… but you’re still bombarded like hell with ads (usually very sex related ads) and their interface is clunky. Plus why would GoDaddy own this domain?? Mrgodaddyfucksthegodaddygirl.com ?? Whois shows its been owned by them since feb-2005. Wait, isn’t that when the big scandalous commercial came out?

@DavidEzra

WTF is this http://david.lovesbaseball.com/

Network Solutions is a true piece of crap company. This is the scam they pulled with a client of mine. He had registered his company’s domain with register.com, who was also doing the DNS for his website. Network Solutions sent him a “renewal notice” which he paid. By paying, it transferred the domain from Register to Network Solutions. The side effect was they also took the DNS servers and pointed them to their BS parking page. It took several days to get it fixed and set back to Register - and it was only persistent support folks at register that got it back without weeks of faxing notarized legal documents. This was years a go and still pisses me off. I’d like to punch some random employee at network solutions for working for those assclowns.

Check out the picture of the douchebag CEO “Champ” Mitchell. http://about-networksolutions.com/letter.php

hey Champ, f-u and your crap company.

This crap should be illegal. What a bunch of crooks. Yes, there are other companies in America that are crooked like another poster said (companies like credit card companies and rebate scams) but this doesn’t make it right.

So I use GoDaddy for registering the domain and SliceHost for my VPS needs.

cbmeeks

Yahoo offers $1.99 domains once in a while. I have registered over 10 domains at $1.99.

“(transferring to a new registrar is a pain)” - Actually, it isn’t. Getting Register.com to give you the code to transfer IS a pain. You get the code and it is amazingly simple (and automated).

I blogged about this a while back (http://lagesse.org/domain-transfers/) but I’ve since learned how to make it easy - call Register.com and demand a transfer number for whatever domains you want to transfer. Don’t let them talk - talk over them. Keep demanding the transfer number. It seems they must write this info into your account, because the next time you do a transfer it gets MUCH easier.

The key is to do it on the phone, and not let them start their sales pitch. If they start, they will not stop.

And that is why I am moving ALL of my domains from Register.com.

Another post of mine regarding their “piss me off” practices is here: http://lagesse.org/more-domain-name-stuff/

So I now have a bunch of domains with GoDaddy at about a fifth of what Register.com cost. And GoDaddy is always nice to me.

Rob

you guys don’t read reddit or slashdot anymore?

this was all over those sites a few days ago… with all sorts of hacks to spam Network Nosolutions…. to no effect of course, but the rebelliousness of adolescence needs an outlet even in the technovirtual era…

the thing that amazes me, how guys go home at night feeling good about their work … honey, i discovered some amaaazing misspellings today…. yikes

humans are weird

That is crazy, we just searched for 30 domain names. Over the next week or so we plan on writing a bot that will just register a bunch of domain names.. See how well they handle that.

Sounds to me like Network Solutions is now pulling from the same playbook as Verisign. Its sad when companies decide they can only compete by using these sorts of tactics.

I met the then CEO of Network Solutions a few years back in a bar in Savannah, GA. He spent the whole night trying to woo the woman I took there with offers of flights around the world on ‘his’ jet.

I took the opportunity to tell him and a high up tech officer about what a crappy company they were. While I was lambasting them with horror stories of transfers, customer support, their insane pricing structures, etc… his lackys would come up to the conversation saying… “Hey! I hear you are a customer!”, hoping to show the boss man how much they cared. When I explained to each one how bad I thought the company was they would turn a weird shade of green and slink right out of the conversation.

I extracted as much vengeance as I could for getting screwed for years on domain name buys, transfers and the like.

It was pretty farking satisfying.

Someone should automate queries on their search site with random domains that will be unlikely to ever be registered. For instance long domains with many consecutive constants that are not pronounceable in any language. nnnnmmmrrrrqq.com xxzzrrhhppwww.com and so forth. If this doesn’t increase their costs of business it will at least piss them off.

and you thought Liberty Names Of America was bad!

Sounds like a desperate attempt to drum up business at the expense of newbies. Occasionally, I get snail mail from domain registrars trying to get me to register my existing domains for even a higher price than I’m paying at Yahoo or Bluehost

I register all my domain names with network solutions and I always thought they were a reputable company. I thought their user interface was worth the extra money, but after reading this article I have second thoughts. I don’t want to do business with a company that is scamming people.

I don’t think this will last long. It’s a class action lawsuit waiting to happen. Someone wasn’t thinking when they gave the go ahead on this.

Domain swiping has been a problem within the domain industry for years and is not seen as illegal.

Successful swipers have been linked to Oversee.net, which owns SnapNames and DomainSponsor. Detective work linking Oversee.net to swiping is published on:

http://spamlinks.net/blog/arch....._hold.html

There have been numerous accusations within the industry that GoDaddy has sold data on domain names that were queried for availability on GoDaddy.com. These accusations are bolstered by examples of queries conducted at GoDaddy that led to registrations of the same domain names at registrars linked to founders and staff at Oversee.net. Some of those accusations come from officials at GoDaddy’s competitors. GoDaddy representatives strongly deny selling data and publicly condemn the practice of swiping. They classify swiping as part of tasting.

Oversee.net and ICANN have refused to respond to numerous inquiries on the issue.

Within the domain industry, there is a reluctance to criticize the business practices of established vendors. The industry is consolidating and service firms and commercial registrants (investors) can find it difficult to avoid doing business with one or more companies that may have engaged in questionable business practices. It is an industry similar to the hazardous waste treatment and disposal industry in New Jersey before the explosion and fire in 1980 at the Chemical Control Corporation facility in Elizabeth, NJ (see: http://www.time.com/time/magaz.....-1,00.html).

Perhaps Network Solutions engaging in swiping will spark an explosion that will change the industry, similar to the effects of the explosion of Chemical Control. That explosion led to New Jersey’s A901 law, which sought to limit industry participation to companies and individuals that had not been credited with criminal or unethical behavior in the past.

But I guess not only network solutions, some reported on my blog post saying even they performed searches on godaddy and others will lead to the domain name being snatched! And the culprit behind is a company called UltraRPM aka MetaPredict…. and they us spyware on infected browsers to detect your search on several registrar websites!

Those f*ing bastards are unbelievable!! Here’s what I encountered when I tried to transfer a client’s domain to a new registrar:

First: We had to go into their account and turn off the registrar “lock” in order to get an authorization key (to be submitted when ordering the renewal through the new registrar)

Then: I expected to get the authorization code but HELL NO…instead here’s what we got - a notice saying we couldn’t move the account to a new reg for 60 days…sounds like unfair trade practices to me here’s the email:

Dear Network Solutions® Customer,

Some of the domains in your account(s) will not be able to be transferred to another registrar for a period of 60 days, as a result of a Primary Contact or WHOIS Admin Contact change on January 8, 2008. This transfer-lock has been applied for security reasons, to help prevent unauthorized transfer of your domain registration(s) to another registrar.

To see which domains have been locked, simply log into your Account Manager and click on a domain.

The transfer-lock will be removed on March 8, 2008, after which, should you wish, you may transfer your domain registration(s). If you are planning to move to another registrar, we would like to do whatever it takes to keep your business - please let us know how we can improve our service to you.

###

What can you do to keep business? Let’s see how about:
1) Lower your prices to a market competitive rate.
2) Make doing business with your company EASY instead of a Pain-In-The-Ass
3) Get a fucking clue and realize that the domain name is owned by us..your client..not you.

I don’t understand why NS and Register.net and the other big players from the 90’s don’t compete by dropping their prices. Can someone shed some light on this please.

To clarify the comment above, I have used GoDaddy for years and have never experienced swiping. If they did sell data, which is questionable, it never led to the sort of systematic or widespread swiping that Network Solutions is apparently engaged in.

It is possible that they experienced data leaks when whois queries were passed on to registrars outside of their control. Swipers could have merely targeted queries coming from GoDaddy for swiping.

I like the idea of automating a script to search for a bunch of worthless names - at least it will plug up their database.

What a bunch fo Losers!!

Just do searches on copyrighted names and alert the copyright holders.
Better yet, have them register variations on your copyright and immediately issue law suits. When they release your URL, repeat.
Sue them for their (automated) copyright infringement.

I was sick to my stomach when I read this. That is the dirtiest, scumbag, shady, dishonest, horrible thing that could ever happen. I was always worried about that, but figured it had to be illegal. You are trusting these guys with your livelihood when you are registering your business. Nobody “squats” anymore, all those names have been taken, when you register a creative name it is your IP, Intellectual Property. I can’t believe a FORMER, reputable company would stoop to this disgusting level.

What are we going to do about it? I went to GoDaddy (I recommend highly), to register BoycottNetworkSolutions.com, it was taken. I typed it into my browser, and it came up with that “Under construction, coming soon, Owned by NS” splashpage. I went to NS and typed it in, it was available. $35 for name, $9 for privacy, and $12 to be able to forward. I paid $56 for something that would cost me $8 at GoDaddy. I don’t have time to develop a page, but if someone wants to put up a wiki, a forum, a website anything to bash these criminals , let me know. Contact me and I’ll point BoycottNetworkSolutions.com there. In the meantime I’ll point to this TC post. (may take 24hrs.)

Info@DomainsForeLease.com

They make me want to puke.

I had an interesting experience too, two days ago. Was going to register a domain on Register.com, but they wanted to charge me $35 (instead of the $20 they charged me last time around). So I bought the domain on Godaddy.

Two hours later I got email from register.com offering the same domain for $19.95. So first they try to sell it at $35, then they lower the price to $19.95 and try again. Gross.

this has been an issue for many years, ever since domaining was born. I can say that NetworkSucktions have been doing it for years. It is nothing new for them.

As a result of this kind of tactics I used the whois.php script and made my own whois engine http://domainrecord.info/. Functionality is limited, but it does the most basic function of who is: is the domain register? If it is, who owns it and when does it expire?

Network Solutions is a joke. This is a terrible thing to do to your customers. I will do all that I can to get people who use them to move away. I’ve already been doing this for years but this will be another tack on the list.

@66: I like it.

My comment: Wow, what lying assholes. Part of what they are doing is called “domain tasting,” I think (probably already commented here). That four days is a “free look” or “taste” of the domain name. If it gets traffic for any reason, they keep it b/c it’s valuable for their pages full of ads. If no traffic, maybe it gets run though an algorithm and/or human, who see if it meets any other criteria that may give it value. What pricks, using their customers like that. And lying about it, saying it’s for someone else’s benefit other than their own. Idiots.

Mainstream media needs to pick up this story and run with it.

My proposed solution to this and many other ills is making .com names cost $100 wholesale, with no tasting allowed.

Yes, I’m sure everybody would bitch. But if you’re doing anything serious, or even anything not-so-serious with your domain name, then $100 is a fraction of your costs, and for most businesses, a very small fraction.

However, it would be a huge barrier to the typo squatters and other lowlifes. Who, I should remind everybody here, are the main reason that new startups have ever more ridiculous names.

Combine that with a serious crackdown from Google and a Firefox built-in that avoids known squatters, and a lot of these parasites would have to go back to selling used cars and multi-level marketing frauds.

This happens a lot, its not just Network Solutions unfortunately.

I recommend you use whois.sc to do lookups.

This is one industry that needs regulation.

Actually year ago I had simmilar experience with goDaddy - searched for domain name, then next day it was temporary registered

Hey john, as I mentioned, it could be all the registrars are doing the same thing nowadays. Isn’t it confirmed that the domain name was taken by Network Solutions after performing a search for it? Or it’s actually taken by another company called UltraRPM? My experience is a domain name was stolen by UltraRPM after doing a search for it without registering it at once. But they released it after 5 days as I remained silent for it. It happened to me in Jul, last year and I’d written a blog post for it. And I found from some other blogs claiming that they’re actually using spyware infected browsers to detect what domain name that you’ve searched for and grab it immediately if you don’t register it after the search.

As other people have mentioned above, this is really an ICANN issue. All the domain registers practice shady tactics. Not to mention all the cyber-squatters out there.

Don’t expect Verisign to enforce regulations on Network Solutions. Versign makes ~$6 off each registration. More registrations, regardless of the source or tactics, equals more money.

ICANN needs to push more rules and regulations down to Verisign and the companies who register through it.

Slight off topic, but I think ICANN should raise their “administrative fees” for .com names. Pocket the money or give the money to charity; I don’t care. The fact is, it is currently way too cost effective for jackasses (see DavidEzra above) to sit on thousands of domain names. By raising the annual fees, it would… 1.) Release more .com domains back into the public 2.) push and legitimize the .org, .net, and other non-.com spaces

they were doing something similar back in 2004.

I did a search for an obscure domain on network solutions and it was then taken the next day…they diddn’t make it available to buy and they only held onto it for a few days so I got the domain in the end.

you guys are way slow on this story.

We always knew this ? well I did anyway.

Learnt years ago that I should do whois only on Namecheap and godaddy.

somebody should throw a legal bomb under their ass and sue the hell out of them. The whole grace period thing needs killing . This is why the internet should be an internationally ran entity .
————

http://www.xencasino.com

This is as shady as it gets

register.com is also charging similar price and even more than that, I always prefer to buy domains from godaddy & eNom only and have never experienced such problem.

They are creating a monopoly. This is ridiculous. Might as well not even have your “own” domain name, because this business practice is a bit like theft of intellectual thought. So your telling me, that if I wanted to get the web name: http://www.eskimozebras.com/ and went to Network Solutions first, but didn’t buy it that day through Network Solutions, I would loose my intellectual property in an instant. Network Solutions is bogus. This is kinda like a reverse Bait & Switch Scam. This practice really needs to be looked into. They should at least Clearly state this info on their site. Honestly, TechCrunch should not even drive any traffic to them. I’m surprised people go to this service. $35 ? For what?