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Before you continue to check the availality of your desired domain name, we would like to share some information that could help protect you from losing out on the domain name you would like to purchase: There are legal (perhaps not ethical, but legal) ways to intercept which domain names are being checked for availability and which domain names are due to expire. The end result is that you may lose ownership of your desired domain name to a "lurker" who will intercept this information and use it to: In the first situation, the "lurker" will scoop up a domain name if they judge there to be interest in it based on the number of times its availability is checked. If your domain name was purchased by "lurkers" you may be lucky if the "lurkers" are not willing to sink money into actually paying money for the domain name, in which case they may hold it hostage for the free 5-day reserve period offered by some registrars, afer which they may simply let it go. If you are not lucky, you will have two choices, contact the "lurker" and purchase the domain name from him (generally at a premium), or purchase a different domain name. Shockingly, even a big name registrar has gotten into the act of "Front Running" To read about it, click here. Simply doing a "whois" from this well known company's site will cause the domain name to be reserved by them, making them the only company from which you can purchase the domain name. They charge $25/year as opposed to Also Networks' $10/year for the exact same service. If you follow the story thread links at the bottom of the article, it looks like that company has taken a partial step back from this embarrassing behavior, but they are not completely stepping away from it. Let the buyer beware! To help avoid this situation, we advise our customers to first make a list of domain name possibilities in their order of preference. Then, when they are ready to make the purchase - and not before - beginning with their most preferred domain name, enter the domain names into the domain name purchasing system, and immediately purchase the first domain name that is available. If you delay purchasing and check the availablity day after day, you risk getting caught in the this trap. The second trap is best illustrated by a true story forwarded to us by someone who knows the victim. The names have been changed: About 7 years ago, I had a website created for my private practice. I contracted with the ABC websites to host my site. ABC purchased a domain name for me from a registrar, Netwizards, valid for one year. (I didn't want to pay for more until after seeing whether the website was effective.) When the expiration date approached, the registrar informed ABC. ABC promptly contacted me and got the green light to extend ownership for another year. The next time this happened, I opted to extend for 5 years. Two years ago, I transferred my site from ABC to XYZ . Unfortunately, neither ABC nor XYZ mentioned the matter of eventual domain renewal. As far as can be pieced together, Netwizards probably sent a renewal notice to ABC, and ABC current employees did not know whom to forward it to.

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