Someone has my old domain name–is this person hoping for a ransom?
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My domain expired when I went to renew it I found it was no longer available. Even worse, if someone puts my domain name in the browser, it automatically goes to [affiliate site removed].
On whois, it says that it is now registered to wildwestdomains.
I have no intention of buying it back, or asking Go Daddy to “negotiate” for me, but is this a common sort of shady internet practice? Who would want my relatively useless domain name other than me?The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Oh, wildwestdomains was just the registrar. The site now belongs to one Martin Green of Tallahassee.
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Since you let your domain name theassassinbug.com expire, then anyone can buy it including domain squatters. Please see this document for more information http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/domain-expiration/
If you don’t want the domain name back, then go to your domain dashboard on your site and put back your wordpress.com address as the primary domain. That should also remove the expired domain overlay.
If you need more help with that, please post back here.
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Which wouldn’t affect the outcome of the above. The consequence is still the same. If you let your custom domain name fully expire (beyond the Grace Period, beyond the Redemption Period), it’s released to the public at large.
That’s probably why there are warnings about not letting your custom domain name expire if you are still interested in using it.
Additionally, it is wise for any domain owner to put a large red reminder on their own calendar, digital or otherwise, about when their domain is up for renewal and not rely solely on someone else reminding them of this important date.
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Yes, definitely my bad, but I guess I’m just annoyed that at the practices of domain squatters. Also, why would anyone spend the time and money to buy theassassinbug.com. It’s not like it’s Coca-Cola or anything.
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Some just buy most anything that has expired but was in use for a while in hopes of some sort of gain, the domain can be used to get traffic from search engines for a while (seems to be common) – – one place I saw has squatted on a domain name for a town that has all of 50 people in it.
Other people buy an expired domain to use themselves, then their great plans never quite get done, I got my domain name when the original owner let it expire after several years of not using it at all.
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The guy that bought mine has over 500 domain names. He must have been smoking something if he thought theassassinbug.com was about to sweep the country.
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They have a redirect to a real spammy site – so they are getting clicks on the traffic and maybe someone will want to get rich quick and click on the spam
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