Trying to obtain existing domain

  • Unknown's avatar
    welcometowonderland · Member ·

    In 2015 (possibly until 2017), I registered with a plan through WordPress and obtained the domain welcometowonderland.me. I have not renewed it in several years but am interested in renewing now and keeping the same domain. When you type in this domain, it is still my blog but with posts published while I paid for the plan and not posts after the plan expired. When I try to follow the steps to unlock the domain, I can’t find the provider information, possibly because I obtained the domain directly through WordPress back then. Is there a way you can help me obtain the information so that I may unlock the domain and merge it again with my blog? Thank you!

    WP.com: Yes
    Correct account: Yes

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    You used to own the domain, welcometowonderland.me, under this WordPress.com account, and it was connected to your site at http://welcometowonderland.wordpress.com/. All your content still exists at that free WordPress.com address.

    The site currently at welcometowonderland.me isn’t yours, and isn’t hosted on our servers. That domain expired in December 2018, and was subsequently deleted by the registry and then registered by someone else through the domain provider, Dynadot.com.

    So I’m afraid there is no way at all for us to help you restore that domain at this point – you no longer own it, and we no longer control it.

    The site currently loading there looks like an old version of your site, because whoever bought the domain scraped your site’s content, and replicated it on their own site. This is a common tactic used by domain squatters so they can benefit from your site’s existing search ranking, as the site will continue getting traffic from search results and existing links on the web. A domain squatter can then montise this traffic by, for example, displaying ads on the site (which they’re doing in this case).

    The only way to get that domain back is if the current owner was willing to sell it back to you. That’s not something we can help with, and you’ll need to contact Dynadot directly to get in touch with the domain owner. Keep in mind that you run a very real risk of getting defrauded when doing business with domain squatters, though, especially the type that would steal your content like in this case.

    To have your content taken down you’d need to file a copyright claim directly with the hosting provider. It looks like that’s https://zomro.com/. However, based on https://scamalytics.com/ip/isp/zomro-b-v it looks like that host might have a reputation for hosting fraudulent content, so it’s possible they might not care about the DMCA and other copyright laws, so be careful in any dealings with them as well.

    Let me know if you have any questions.

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