Lost domain name

Embarrassing as it sounds, due to lack of staff and oversight on our part, one of our domain names expired and was purchased by another user. The new owner is posting hundreds of pages under the domain, all which have only one link, which takes the user to ebay to register! There is no email address to contact the new owner. To make matters worse no hardcopy invoice was mailed to us to renew, one was emailed but the email is dead awaiting new coordinator (such is life in the nonprofit world.)

My questions are:

1) Is there any chance we can get this domain name back by "buying" it from the new user? If so how do we contact him/her?
2) The domain name is very abstract, how did this user happen to register it in the month it lapsed? Is there some kind of system out there that notifies people of high-hit domains expiring? (would like to know for future reference!)
3) If we can't get our domain name back what are our other options?

Jennifer

Hi Jennifer,

Unfortunately, your rights have expired along with the domain name and there are no guarantees of being able to get your name back from the new owner. Furthermore, getting your domain name back can be very time consuming and expensive.

However, there are at your disposition two different options you can try to win back your domain name. One way is known as ICANN Arbitration, a process that applies to you if you have a trademark on the name in question. Through this approach a certain set of criteria must be met. Another option is called Domain Purchase, which is available to anyone at anytime. As the name implies, it involves contacting the new owner to negotiate the possibility of "buying back" your domain name. The owner has the right to accept or decline your offer.

For a complete overview of these two approaches, I recommend you visit the link below:
http://www.domainguru.com/article/347/37

You can find contact information about the owner of a particular domain name by doing a WHOIS database search. This is a free online service. Here's a link to a WHOIS database:
http://networksolutions.com/en_US/whois/index.jhtml

If you have no luck getting back your old domain name, consider creating and registering a new name for your organization as soon as possible. Remember to always renew the name on time, if possible several months before the expiration deadline.

Hope this helps.

Yann

When a domain name expires, it is generally put on a "hold" status for awhile before being released and open to be registered. If that period seems like it was short, you may be able to use that as part of an argument to the registrar, or to ICANN.

This NOT an uncommon problem, and domain registrations should ALWAYS be set up with at least one of the 3 contacts, usually the admin or billing contact set up as an email forward. Something like admin@domain.com. This way, the forward can be updated to the current contact address at your domain. Sometimes this is done to forward it to webmaster@, so you can be sure you get any notifications of this nature.

If you new user is "misusing" the domain, just to try and profit off of your old traffic, you might also have some more credibility with the registrar or ICANN.

Let me know if you need help in tracking down the current domain holder. Whois works, but I might be able to tell you some additional information that may help in getting your domain back, should you decide to go that route. The last I heard, filing a complaint with ICANN cost about $500. I'm sure you need to try and contact the domain holder first and try to see it you can get it back at a "fair" price. Be sure to play up your under-funded non-profit status as much as possible. Have a woman contact them who has good "people skills". This may be distasteful, but you need to know that many of these domain grabbers ARE distasteful and are only interested in money. The less you have, the more likely it will not cost an outrageous amount to get it back.

If you decide to not pursue the old domain, then let me know if you want some help in finding a new one. You may be able to find one that will be better than what you had, and also one that can help your site to get traffic in the search engines.

You can get your site set up with the new domain name and start submitting to search engines, calling your user-base, and letting everyone know about the change.

If you search for your organization's name, of if you search for what you organization's topic was and your old domain comes up, it can be reported to Google and they will "scrub" it from the index and therefore take away much of the domain's value from the current holder. In fact, that would give you an advantage in buying it back! Contact me for more information.

Thanks,
Christian

I have strong support and sympathy for any org that loses a domain name, and I hope they are successful in recovering their domain name. For those who haven't lost a domain name and for the future, this underlines the importance of maintaining records of this information. Staff leave, things change. Don't let the knowledge the organization needs get lost in the shuffle. Use a notebook, or a software application, whatever, but use something to keep track of information. The TechPlanning forum here on techsoup can also offer suggestions on this.

2) The domain name is very abstract, how did this user happen to register it in the month it lapsed? Is there some kind of system out there that notifies people of high-hit domains expiring? (would like to know for future reference!)

Many registrars or other network service providers will allow someone to "back-order" a domain name. This generally entails paying some sort of annual fee for the service. Here is a FAQ on back-ordering: http://www.namealerts.com/back-order-faq.htm

The way it works is that the service provider checks the availability of a domain at a specified interval (every 12 hours, every 24 hours, etc...) -- the moment it is listed as available, the system will register it to the user who back-ordered it. They can't offer a guarantee, since present domain owners get first shot at renewing the domain. Here's an example:

1. You own the domain "example.com", which I would like to purchase. I set up an account with a service that will allow me to back-order this domain. This includes pre-authorization to register it under my name.
2. The service checks every 12 hours to see if "example.com" is available. If it is unavailable, the service does nothing.
3. Oops, you forgot to renew your contract -- "example.com" now shows up as being available.
4. Sometime within the next 12 hours, the service will do the check and see that "example.com" is now available. (At this point, if you remember and can beat the back-ordering service, you can register for the domain on your own and will get it back.)
5. The service will automatically register the domain under my name, and notify me that I am now the owner.
6. At this point, you no longer have access to anything that depends upon "example.com" (without going through some of the legal hoops as described previously).

The official standards for domain name expiry allow for 2 or 3 grace periods within which the current owner of a domain may renew. However, this may vary from registrar to registrar -- so you may not have that much leeway if your domain does expire. Here is a diagram on this topic: http://www.hostlead.com/articles/domain-names/back-ordering/domain-name-delete-process.php

If you use Outlook or some other type of calendaring software, you might find it helpful to set up 3-month, 2-month, and 1-month reminders to renew. Note that there is usually no penalty for early renewal -- so even if you renew a month early, you don't overlap your final month.

You may also consider back-ordering your own domain, to guard against slip-ups. Again, there are usually no guarantees (there may be many back-ordering services competing for the domain), but it may give you one final layer of protection.

Good luck with sorting it all out. :cwm11;