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Comment by sergiotapia | Hacker News Reader

Some bottom feeder stole my personal domain after I let it lapse and is now literally holding it hostage for $6000 last I checked. http://sergiotapia.me/

I just bought sergio.dev, the squatter can choke on my old domain.

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If you let it lapse, is "stole" a bit strong? I'd think "stole" would be getting your login/email and transferring the domain away while you had it registered?

It's more like you dropped your wallet on the street and the guy walking behind you picked it up and won't give it back unless you pay him.

No, it's more like you accidentally put something out on the street by your trash and someone came by and picked it up. Just because you got rid of it on accident doesn't mean you didn't get rid of it.

And to forestall arguments about that being someone's property, trash on the street is considered public property in many (most?) jurisdictions, which is why the police don't need a warrant to go through it.

Edit: and there are ways that this gets slimy too. I'm not debating the maral ramifications of this, just whether it fits the common definition of stealing. It's less theft and more more someone looking for people's small mistakes and making a living my making them very costly for those people. Morally bankrupt, but not illegal. Like the person who drives around looking for ADA compliance issues with businesses so they can sue them, not to make the situation better but just to extract money. Not illegal, but pretty despicable when done for personal gain.

In some jurisdictions, the guy behind you would actually be entitled to a finder's reward in this case. For example, here in Germany, finder's reward is between 3% or 5% of the item's value: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__971.html

The only reason a squatter ever registers expiring domain names is to capitalize on someone else's mistake and to see if they can extort some cash out of someone or take over a domain with existing backlinks for black hat SEO reasons. I don't think "stole" is really all that strong of a statement albeit technically incorrect.

If someone buys up an expiring domain name because they want to actually use it and not just try and immediately sell it back to the previous owner no one has an issue with that.

I think stole, while not technically correct, is appropriate. The squatter had no intention of using the domain. They jumped on a domain that had just expired and registered it in the hope that the previous owner had made a mistake and might be willing to pay them an exorbitant amount of money to get it back.

I think it's more likely they registered it in the hope that it's valuable in general. Not that the previous owner had made a mistake.

I let a previous, business, domain go a few years ago. 3-4 months later I started getting mail offering to sell it back to me for several thousand dollars from some scumsucking company. Jokes on them, I let it expire because I was done with that property. They mailed me every week or two for several months and it was definitely a "we send thousands of these a day, this is blatantly a form letter that we've copy pasted your semi-nonsensical domain into"

Lets pick a different word that can be used in the pejorative which accurately reflects our disdain

“Domain marauders swept in”?

“Swiped it”?

I am also facing similar issue. Forgot to renew my domain and now someone has bought it and asking $1000 for it.

This is exactly why I just renewed my personal domain for 10 years!

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