http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2386069#post17269360 Essentially, take very good care of: a) how you access your domain account, and b) your email address on file.
a friend of minds had his domain stolen and has yet to get it back. it was from a very popular domain company to.
If you bought them through your credit card , then you have to contact your registeral and sure they will help you.
Did they change the Domain registrar DNA and what the domain is pointing to? If they didn't change your DNS etc you can just change the domain back to pointing your server/host. If they have control of your account and have changed the password for the domain, your domain name registrar should still show you on file as paying for the domain for a specific period of time and they should make the corrections in good business etiquette. IF your domain name has EXPIRED and you didn't catch it in time, this is another issue because then your domain was free to sell, of course the register company should've gave you warning through several emails that it would expire. What details can you prove about your domain ..who did you register it through ? GoDaddy? NetworkSolutions? etc and is that account changed where your password no longer works? and the biggest questions, was your domain still 'yours' through a paid term?
password still works fine.. domain was pushed to us for free since the previous owner owed us money on it.
When you say "hacked" does that mean the broke in OR Does it mean they found out your name, looked at your facebook account, then took your daughter/sons name, dogs name, cats name, fish name then tried them a bunch of times until they were right? Anyway, I'm truly sorry for what happened and because of you I have a numbers/symbols/and it LONG. If that happened to me, I couldn't be responsible for what I would do.
that's part of the reason i posted here - to save the next person from this happening. and yes it probably was the first scenario.. that's why we should all take a lesson and only use complicated passwords that even we can't remember..
Seems kinda of strange, dont hosts have some type of email verification before the domain is transfered away from the owner? If this the case, the hacker was able to hack your register, and your email? sounds a bit unlikely. The domain has to be transfered somewhere, even though they may not be using hosting; they had to pay for the transfer, either they used their real info in order to transfer the domain, or they used something stolen to pay for the transfer...so if they used their real cc then you have them, if they used stolen payment info, then you clearly should have no issues getting your stolen goods back... really depends on how far godaddy is willing to investigate, if the domains were moved to another godaddy account, then it should not take long for them to investigate, if they were transfered away, then godaddy should contact the other register and find out if this was legit payment, or fraud payment; to be honest, its much easier for godaddy to do nothing... $100k domain? is that a true value? or is that a value that you would like to get? It could be worth $50 for all i know, but if it is truly worth $100k, then file a police report, and get an attory to contact godaddy, otherwise they will not think you are serious. If I had the option to make some noise for a few hundered $$ to get my high value goods back, then I would do it; They are most likely not going to do anything for you until you start getting up into their face. I would not get an attorney until you do everything else you can, the domain is not going to vanish or anything, use your atty option as your very last resort... Be sure to send the police report to everyone that is touching the domain to show you mean business.
Be sure to send the police report to everyone that is touching the domain to show you mean business. already done..
$138k/yr vs $3,000 atty fees?! that would be a no brainer for me.... and attempt to recover any atty fees. so whats the problem? My thing with Godaddy is, they were to lazy to do any investigation, or they felt the transfer was legit. problem is, once the domain leaves godaddy; I am not sure they can really do much of anything... if the domain is on another account with godaddy, then they could freeze that account/domain until everything is resolved...If they can not prove getting their hands on $100k domain, then you would think godaddy would just return the domain, but that is all here-say at this point... I can see where you are coming from...sometime ago, I think someone stole sex.com or something similar. and it was worth millions of dollars...They got the domain back, and I assume they paid good atty fees in order to make that happen so they could get the domain back. This would be a problem lets say if someone stole craigslist.org or some high value domain...It would cause problems and money to get the domain back...but even $100k domain is not something that I would just give up on.... I do not think this would be a problem if registers allowed you to setup a secret/code. so in order to transfer the domain away, not only would you have to enter a code that only you would know, but email confirm also, maybe even extra secuirty checks also... The hacker could not get through them all unless the info was given to them...
If your email address on file is compromised, unfortunately that can get around all the other security measures in place anyway. That's why I emphasized how equally important it is to take care of that aside from how one accesses their domain account. One thing you can ask your registrar is if they allow creating users with varying levels of permission, wherein the "super user" with full account permissions will not necessarily be shown in the WHOIS database or anywhere else publicly. (e.g. password reset)
The simplest method is provide your registrar a notice along with the proof that you are the owner of these sites by providing the email messages that you received when you registered those sites.
If the domains relate to your business and he names correspond, then you can use the dispute resolution route (500+). Helps if you have trademarks etc. I have done this a few years ago when somebody did the same.
Interesting story! I am aware of people here in Australia registering domains with Godaddy with fake names, fake business Id's and the like. Ditto for a local registrar as well, making me guess that the sellers do not check details of alleged people very often and the named registrars are probably no different to most of the rest. It seems that so long as they get paid they are happy.All the best
As others have said, contact your registrar. Also, I would recommend looking up who their webhost is and reporting them. You can use a "Whois" lookup to do this. Make sure you have evidence to prove you are the owner of the hijacked sites. All the best!
This was never a case of just a randomly "stolen" domain name. You have now shared more facts in the thread, which if read carefully, should make it clear to everyone this is not an average case of a hacked domain name. According to the post above, I gather that someone bought it from you, you transferred it to them, since you are calling them the previous owner. Then, as you state above it was pushed back to you because money was still owed on it. I think the reason this is not being resolved simply at the registrar level is because there is a dispute as to who is the actual owner of the domain. The solution to enforcing the rights you think you have in the domain is to hire a lawyer and pursue it. People should not be reading this thread thinking this will happen to their domains. This is a factually unique case. The only part I would take from this thread is that it always makes sense to have complicated and unique passwords to any web based account that holds any kind of asset, be it money or a domain. I do find the way they apparently took the domain from you suspicious but there are a lot of facts not available.
Someone sold me a stolen domain once. It was taken away from me when the owner contacted the registrar.