- ask your registrar to do the 'registry lock' on your domain. Not registrar lock but 'registry lock' specifically. Most will do this. If they won't, then transfer to another registrar.
- register the domain for at least 5 years. 10 years if you can.
- use the 2FA at your domain registrar. There are some registrars that offer a "pass code" or other task to be performed before the domain can be transferred. At one registrar, I have the requirement that they need to call me on my cell phone and I must mention a code word to them.
- If you're using Google or a Google Account (not recommended but in some cases it's necessary), then absolutely sign up for Google Advanced Protection. I cannot tell you how many domains have been stolen and lost because they were using a google account (gmail).
- Remove privacy whois on your domain. Use a business address, email (not gmail) and a real phone number on the whois of your domain. If the domain is stolen, then the whois history will show who owns it... if it goes to privacy then the thief/hacker most likely wants to hide themselves. If you get spam email/calls from that public whois data, then change registrars. It's certain registrars that are giving out or allowing scraping of their whois data.
- If you don't already own a trademark on the word in the domain, then don't think that that getting a tm will protect your domain name. If you registered the domain before someone files for the trademark, then you have the rights to it. Don't let anyone else tell you that you don't, especially if you are using it for a website.
There is a big effort right now by one of the working groups at ICANN to review dns abuse. They’re trying to address it because it IS a big problem. Even though the latest report says it’s going down globally. https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/icann-publishes-dns-a...
They are addressing it, though, and I believe there is a place for public comments.
The idea that these entirely ordinary uses of DNS constitute as "DNS abuse" is ridiculous.
Sure, maybe phishing and botnets are bad. (Just like maybe daily stormer, kiwifarms and reddit are bad). They're still all perfectly ordinary DNS users, they're not "abusing" DNS.
A botnet using botnet.com to find the IP address of the C&C server is no different than everyone else using google.com to find the IP address of the search engine.
What I have an issue with is that Google's numbers change if you click on a few pages of results. Search for a keyword. Go to the bottom and click on the last page of results. Then keep clicking as deep as you can... notice that the number of results for that keyword will change.
For one keyword search query, first it's 9,480, then 11,800 and then 105. Changes if you click on the next page of results (page 2, 3, 4, ... 10, etc.)
NameCheap doesn't "steal" domain names, they're just a domain name registrar. They may locked your account, but they can't (and won't) steal domain names.
It sounds like someone may have gained access to your account or there may have been some other issue. It's usual for them to have ask for video proof that you're the domain owner.
>It's usual for them to have ask for video proof that you're the domain owner.
Putting aside the fact that it is just an insecure and undignified way of transferring data. Why not host the 'video proof' site on namecheap domain? so you know who's watching. And why not ask for photo ID instead of credit card? I mean anyone can send an email "go to [whatever] domain and show me your credit card, or I'll stop your [whatever] service" and NameCheap users will be conditioned into falling for this scam. Its reckless and unprofessional.
And i don't know how else to define took some of my money and registered a domain.. then kept it cause that's what happened. You have a deadline to do your cam show, which is shorter than the time their support service takes to answer an email about your concerns; After that you lose some of your money and your domain.
I’ve had two occasions in the past year where I needed to document everything. In both, I went room to room photographing everything.
The first was was right before we moved from one state to another, about 12 hours away. Luckily we sold a lot of stuff (mainly on FB marketplace), which took literally about a year—you never know how much stuff you’ve accumulated until you move. And 20 plus years is a lot, with raising 2 kids. I took initial of everything, especially before we let people come through house when it was for sale.
Then,6 months after being in the new house, there’s a wildfire within a few miles ( we live in national forest area of Colorado), and we are in the evacuation zone. So I’m frantically going around photographing room to room while the rest of the family grabs the important stuff like phones, tablets and laptops. And other essentials. Didn’t expect that, so now I’m working on cataloging everything.
>> You can always add a "get" prefix or "app" suffix (or a bunch of other options). If you are sold on a company name then by all means, grab the domain.
I totally agree, you can always "upgrade" later to a better, shorter, or more appropriate domain later. The TLD doesn't matter, either. The only potential exception to this would be if you're building something "local", whereas you'd want to get the ccTLD domain if you're targeting users in one particular country.
That assumes such a domain is available. There's an entire cottage industry around snapping up short or interesting domains and renting them to customers. https://venture.com/ it looks like their entire business model involves squatting on domains and renting to interested people.
That’s what’s confusing in the articles that have come out about quality raters.
Quality Raters don’t actually rank websites.
Quality Raters look at websites and answer questions about them. Google then uses that data as a small part of their algorithm to adjust some factors about those sites.
Quality Raters don’t actually rank pages on google.
We know they probably use CTR as a ranking factor. However, a site could just literally add JS code on the page and disable the back button. So I don’t think that would work out that well for Google.
Since a few years there’s been plenty of cheap tricks that would’ve earned you a manual ban/downrank back in the day that Google now turns a blind eye to.
- ask your registrar to do the 'registry lock' on your domain. Not registrar lock but 'registry lock' specifically. Most will do this. If they won't, then transfer to another registrar.
- register the domain for at least 5 years. 10 years if you can.
- use the 2FA at your domain registrar. There are some registrars that offer a "pass code" or other task to be performed before the domain can be transferred. At one registrar, I have the requirement that they need to call me on my cell phone and I must mention a code word to them.
- If you're using Google or a Google Account (not recommended but in some cases it's necessary), then absolutely sign up for Google Advanced Protection. I cannot tell you how many domains have been stolen and lost because they were using a google account (gmail).
- Remove privacy whois on your domain. Use a business address, email (not gmail) and a real phone number on the whois of your domain. If the domain is stolen, then the whois history will show who owns it... if it goes to privacy then the thief/hacker most likely wants to hide themselves. If you get spam email/calls from that public whois data, then change registrars. It's certain registrars that are giving out or allowing scraping of their whois data.
- If you don't already own a trademark on the word in the domain, then don't think that that getting a tm will protect your domain name. If you registered the domain before someone files for the trademark, then you have the rights to it. Don't let anyone else tell you that you don't, especially if you are using it for a website.