Consumer Watch: Don't Let Your Favorite Site Get Hijacked

Maybe it's the home page for a business you've worked with in the past, or a site with information on helping your orchids thrive. But when you type in the URL and hit Enter, you're suddenly transported to a seamy Web site filled with raunchy pictures and seemingly inescapable pop-up windows.

What happened? It's a practice called a porn-napping, and it's just one of the unpleasant, shady, and sometimes illegal things happening to Web sites and their owners these days. Such activities can make owning a place on the Web--or even surfing the Net--a dicey proposition. But don't despair. Whether you run a site of your own or you're thinking of creating one, I'll give you some tips on acquiring and keeping a domain name while avoiding hassles and scams.

On the Web, your domain name is your home. But some Web residents have been horrified to find their virtual homes turned into houses of ill repute. Netizens who fail to renew their registration, even if they miss the deadline by only a few hours, can find that a domain vulture has snapped up the name and linked it to X-rated content. Then the porn site tries to hold the URL's good name hostage, offering to sell the address back to the original owner at an inflated rate (for more information, click here).

Another domain-related trap is just as sleazy--and downright illegal to boot. Earlier this year the Federal Trade Commission shut down a Web site that tried to cash in on users' post-September 11 patriotism by selling addresses that used a bogus top-level domain such as .usa or .brit in place of a legitimate suffix such as .com or .org (see the full story here).

Registry Slamming

Dozens of domain name holders are complaining about yet another practice--one that sounds disturbingly similar to the outbreak of telephone service "slamming" that occurred a few years ago.

The trick didn't fool Nate Griffith, director of operations for a business management firm in Salt Lake City. When Griffith received a letter in the mail from VeriSign, he immediately became suspicious. "The letter looked exactly like an invoice," he says. "Even though I'd never done business with VeriSign, it stated that I had until April 19th to renew my domain name. Since I had originally registered it [for a year through Yahoo] in July of 2001, none of it made sense. I called the customer service number, and the representative explained that [VeriSign] had sent the letter to let me switch to VeriSign." Griffith acknowledges that this information was "buried in the fine print" of his letter, but he still feels that the practice is unscrupulous. "Isn't this just a cheap shot at consumers who might not even notice they're shelling out $29 for a product they don't even want?"

Not according to VeriSign. When asked to respond to Griffith's comments, VeriSign spokesperson Patrick Burns said, "As the leading registrar [in the domain registry business], we reach out to potential customers to make them aware of our services and their value."

Domains Held Hostage

But not all of the obstacles facing domain holders are put there on purpose. Sometimes even the registry companies seem unable to keep track of their customers. Diane Brandon, a counselor in Durham, North Carolina, found that her domain name was effectively held hostage after Network Solutions, her original registry company, became involved in a series of corporate mergers and acquisitions. "When I went to Network Solutions' Web site to renew my registration, I got an error message and was unable to access or manage the account," Brandon says.

Thus began a months-long ordeal involving hours of phone calls, reams of paper faxes, countless e-mail messages, four different domain registry companies, and even an attorney or two. The administrative problem stemmed from a botched customer record transfer during a period when Web hosting firm Interland partnered with Network Solutions, and it was eventually resolved. But for Brandon, who ended up switching to another registry and Web hosting company, the experience was frustratingly ironic. "At one point I was told that the whole situation happened because of a software glitch," Brandon explains. "The fact that nobody seemed to be able to fix that glitch for weeks when technology is their bread and butter simply does not add up."

As the domain name registry industry grows, we're likely to hear about even more scams, deceptive deals, and customer service woes. The following tips should help you sidestep trouble:

• Research registry companies carefully before you register a new domain name. Visit InterNIC for a full list of legitimate registry companies. Go to RegSelect to compare various companies' prices and services. And check out Web Hosting Ratings for consumer reviews. You can get more information on choosing a hosting service here.
  
  
• Keep up on domain name scams and other consumer news at www.icann.org, a site run by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a nonprofit organization that manages names and addresses on the Internet. Here you can also make sure that any ads hawking a new top-level domain are legitimate. Currently, six ICANN-accredited top-level domains are available to almost any user: .com, .org, .net, .biz, .info, and .name.
  
  
• Check your domain name's Whois listing periodically after registering it. The listing tells you which registry company holds your domain name--useful information if the company you originally did business with got swallowed up in a merger and you missed the announcement.
  
  
• Keep careful track of the renewal dates for all your domain names. If you now use the URLs--or might someday use them--don't let their registrations lapse.
  
  
• Visitors judge you by the company you keep. So regularly check your site's links to ensure they still go to reputable sites.
  
  
• Report scams or questionable business practices to the FTC and to the Better Business Bureau.
  
  

Just like your real-world home, your Web home should be your castle. Make sure that you keep it well protected.