Daily Domain Name Registration Blog

One of ICANN’s hundreds of committees, the snappily-titled Security and Stability Advisory Committee, is embarking on a long-awaited investigation into the suspected registrar practice of domain front-running.

Registrants - myself included, I must admit - have long been concerned about this. The suspicion is that some registrars monitor the searches that potential buyers do for available domain names. If a user searches for a domain but doesn’t register it immediately, some people think that the registrar, or some other unscrupulous person, gets in there and registers the domain with the intention of selling it on - maybe even to the person who originally searched for it. It’s called front-running after the dodgy stockbroker’s practice of buying or selling stocks and shares before their client’s trade because they have some knowledge of a likely price change.

If this is happening, it is troubling! It’s difficult enough to find a good domain anyway, without this sort of thing going on, and it is incredibly frustrating when you think you’re going to be able to snatch a really good domain, only to find someone else got there first, has parked with PPC somewhere, and is asking a ridiculous sum for its purchase.

Of course, a lot of us have heard some anecdotal evidence, where this or that friend searched for a relatively obscure name, it was available, and then an hour later it was gone. The committee isn’t ruling out coincidence, incidentally, and of course it’s also possible that in these situations someone’s domain was actually scooped up in the web of a domain taster who just happened to be registering that bit of the alphabet that day.

However, if there is something fishy going on, hopefully the ICANN committee will find it. It has been suggested that those abusing the system might be using viruses which quietly relay search information to the front-runner. Another possibility is malicious use of an unscrupulous third-party website.

In the meantime, all one can do to be sure is to register that domain as soon as you find out it’s available. At only a couple of pounds a year, it’s better to be safe than sorry. I anxiously await the results of the investigation; I wonder what they’ll do if they find out it’s actually happening. How could you prevent that sort of abuse? There are parallels with the misuse of the WHOIS database: it’s very difficult to cope with that sort of behaviour effectively. We will have to see what they come up with.

Resources:

Dominik Mueller on ICANN’s investigation of domain front running.

The Security and Stability Advisory Committee.