I have been checking availability of domain name and it has been available until last couple of days. Today I decided to purchase that domain and I found it was gone. Somebody purchased it through Go Daddy and it states that it was first time obtained in 2005. I find it very strange as I was checking availability in last 3 months and it was always available. Funny thing is that I was checking availability through Go Daddy. My suspicion is that somebody was observing my queries for domain name and that they simply liked it and took it. Such thing should not happen if you are providing public service. Has anybody heard of anything like this before? The domain name was brilliant and it makes me very angry that this could happen.
Sorry bud... you snooze, you lose... It's possible the domain was previously owned, never developed and then given up before you almost bought it.
As I say it was available couple of days ago (end of June 2007) now it says it was first time registered in May 2005 and expires in May 2008. It doesn't add up. I'll have to investigate it further.
The simple explanation to that is Go Daddy "thought" it was available but isn't. That rarely happens, but it happens even to the best. No theft can occur when one doesn't own something to begin with. But this topic's been beaten to death pretty often.
How in the world is this theft??? You did not have posession of said domain name. There is no theft....
You could have just experienced what is called domain tasting. In other words, a company snaps up the domain that you are interested in, most likely to try and sell it over at a higher price ~ although I have no evidence to back it up. One company that is somewhat known for doing this is chestertonholdings.com The annoying part of domain tasting is that very little is known about it so people are split in deciding if its real or not. See Domain Sniffing Fact Or Fiction . I've seen people complain that it happens with GoDaddy among others. I personally lost a race for a domain from checking on NameCheap. This is exactly why now when I run a check for a domain I'm interested in I'm ready to buy it on the spot. There again what Dave said could be the answer, a mistake on GoDaddy's part for showing it as available.
Domain tasting certainly does occur - though the other common use is not for "stealing" someone elses domain but simply getting hundreds of domains for free for a few days, flood the pages with advertisements and then hand it back within the cooling off period. One of the largest companies that offered this service to people withdrew it recently whilst it investigated the legality esp as the majority of the domains naturally are miss spellings of establish sites or different domain extentions of the same. Many sites offer the ability to "monitor" a domains status and therefore you become notified that a domain has become available for public purchase. It could well be simply coincidence or it could be done by monitoring searches (or an error) but as said.... if you want a domain buy it, they arent expensive
I had a similar case a few weeks back. I was checking the domain for some time, oftenly until I decided to purchase it. I know it's my mistake I didn't but I'm sure I checked it at least twice a week for the past few months and when I decided to go with the purchase, suddenly it said it was registered since 2006. I didn't go this far about posting about domain theft, I thought I must have made a mistake somewhere. I was using whois.sc (or that new site they are redirecting to) to check, I presumed there was a wrong record or something with the domain. Anyway, move on.
The simple explanation to that is Go Daddy "thought" it was available but isn't. That rarely happens, but it happens even to the best. No theft can occur when one doesn't own something to begin with. But this topic's been beaten to death pretty often.
Whenever you think about domain name and find it available, buy it immediately even if you will work on it after few months This happens everyday dude and that's why people are looking for new TLD's
it could be that the domain was previously owned and it expired. there are tons of companies that snatch up expired domains and then place stupid ads on them.
Wow, this exact same thing happened to be but over at NameCheap. I'd been looking at this one domain for months, none of the TLDs were registered. Then, when I finally decide to get it BAM! someone got the .com just the day before me, and it's registered to a person in the same city as me! *strange* , the weird thing is, that the domain could be spelt either with just an o or ou, and somebody else registered the ou as well, not the same person as the o registrar though. Weird.
I think the word "Domain Theft" in this case isn't accurate since you don't own the domain yet and it was available for everyone (including you) to register it but you was damn lazy boy while the other person wasn't
That's why when I buy a domain name I pay for it as soon as I spot it and don't wait that much time. It's known such things happen and I'm sorry for you
Yeah I don't think it is "theft" if you never owned it to begin with. Thats like saying you kept going to a car lot and looking at a car you wanted and you came back a few weeks later and someone had bought it. Would you report the car to the police as stolen?
i saw it happen a couple times like that. Mainly from me buying names though. like one day i purchased xppic.com then the next day xppics was also gone. but i felt like someone was monitoring it and thats happened 2 times like that for me.