Someone stole my domain name
-
Hello, do I have any recourse to get ratfish.com back? What laws do I have available? I can’t believe this expired. Why did I not have domain parking for this name? I’ve been with wordpress so long. Can you help me?
Thank you,
Darrell KirkWP.com: Unknown
Jetpack: Unknown
Correct account: Unknown -
Hi Darrell,
The account you’re using to post here has never owned any domain upgrades on WordPress.com.
The domain, ratfish.com, used to be registered with us, but it belonged to a completely different account.
That domain expired in May last year, and was removed from our system on 7 August when it completed the redemption process. (We sent several emails, both before and after expiration, to remind the domain owner to renew it, including an email on 27 May explaining that auto-renewal had failed.)
The domain was subsequently deleted by the registry and released so that anyone can register it again.
Based on the public Whois information for the domain someone else registered it on 14 August through Networksolutions.com, and that person is now the owner of the domain.
I’m afraid there is nothing we can do at this point. We no longer have control over that domain, and it now belongs to someone else. You can contact Network Solutions to ask if the current owner might be willing to sell the domain back to you, but we’re not able to help with that process.
-
Hello, and thank you for your reply.
I have had that domain name for over ten years and I had it with another host. I brought this over to wordpress as I have had very good service and luck using WordPress. My main page is http://www.StandUpPaddleTheWorld.com
Why did you let my domain name be sold? I know you send a couple of emails, but there must be other things that you can do to protect domain names.
I am looking into legal recouse into this matter and would like to know anything you can do there to contact the company you sold this to, or let take my domain. This is just not acceptable. I have had this domain name for over a decade with another company. Why did I now loose it upon moving it over to WordPress? This is not just my fault here. I expect the world from WordPress as I have been a loyal customer for decades with WordPress.
-
I have two WordPress accounts.
You can see that I brought the domain name over to wordpress not long ago after owning it for over a decade. I lost the domain when I switched over to WordPress. Do you have an agreement with the company that took it? What legal recourse do I have? Why don’t you have a more robust system in place there to protect domain names? People do not want to loose a valuable domain name. Why don’t you have more safeguards in place? -
Domains need to be renewed annually. They are essentially leased/rented for a period of purchased years, not owned, and this is how the entire domain registrar industry operates as per policies established by the organization that oversees all domain registrars: https://www.icann.org/
We have several systems in place to avoid losing a domain name due to expiration, including auto-renew (which was not enabled) and several emails sent both before and after the expiration (which were all sent).
When a domain expires, it goes through a months-long process, during which is can still be recovered: https://wordpress.com/support/domains/domain-expiration/ but in this case, it was not.
After expiring May 26, 2021 (with several emails sent both before and after the expiration), it returned to the public market on August 7, 2021.
The domain was then legitimately purchased off of the public market by someone else through a different domain registrar on August 14, 2021: https://whois.domaintools.com/ratfish.com
We have absolutely no relationship with the new domain’s owner, nor the registrar they’re using, so your only option here would be to contact the new domain’s owner to ask if they’d be willing to sell the domain back to you.
- The topic ‘Someone stole my domain name’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 