bhartzer

Starlink, $110 per month

100mb/s down and 20mb/s upload

Colorado mountains, 10,000 feet altitude.

I've been running a stolen domain name recovery service for a few years now. Even though hacking into someone's account and transferring the domain name to themselves or transferring it to another domain registrar is a crime, it's never prosecuted (when they come to us the first thing we have them do is file a police report).

The problem is that most domain registrars won't help get your domain name back. Many domains are stolen because they hacked the email address and not the domain registrar account (even though that's how they got access). Most domain registrars don't care at all, and won't help. And there are no current ICANN policies for dealing with stolen domain names. Even UDRP is not set up for dealing with stolen domains. Although we were successful getting one back via UDRP since the business was using the domain previously and we ended up claiming 'commonlaw trademark'.

This is one reason why we've been so successful getting stolen domain names back for clients: we use some alternative methods, such as actually talking to people at the registrars involved and talking with the domain thief, to get domains back.

When copying or sharing a link, I usually manually strip out everything after the ? in the URL.

I've been doing this manually for several years now.

Is it possible to create a bookmarklet that does the same thing (i.e., via JavaSript)?

It sound like they’re hosting at the same place (gandi) where they registered the domain. This is absolutely never recommended, for security purposes. If someone gains access to your hosting account you’ll likely lose all your domain names.

Transfer the domains over to a better more secure registrar. Then set up a server or vps and set up as many mailboxes or emails that you need.

I was literally adding a 2FA authenticator app to my Twitter accounts that aren't Twitter Blue accounts when this happened. I thought it was something I did.

Good to know that I can rely on H/N to tell me what's really going on... and it's not "just me".

Best thing you can do is this:

- 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.

So if it wasn’t a lab leak, then where did it come from?

Are there any theories that explain that it could NOT be a lab leak and something else entirely?

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.

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.)

Not sure about the cheapest one, but I know the most expensive one is any domain that you register at an unsecure registrar.

If the domain is stolen, it will end up potentially costing you thousands to get it back. And that’s if you don’t use it for a website.

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.

You take the important stuff, photograph the rest of the belongings in the house. You can’t take everything.

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’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.

Google actually tried that a few years SEO through a google chrome add-on.

I heard it didn’t work very well for them. The results weren’t very good or helpful.

https://www.billhartzer.com My personal blog, I post whenever I feel there's something post-worthy. Lately it's been about stuff I'm passionate about that's related to what I do professionally.

I remember Crazy Eddie's very well. I was a teenager in the 1980s, and I still have the portable Sony Discman I got there for $100. I mowed a lot of lawns in order to save up for that Sony Discman from Crazy Eddie's.

This post went viral back in 2020. I remember seeing it when he first did this using the wagon.

This actually was inspiration for a new "service" that's out there now, which is not publicized that much (because of obvious reasons).

There person running the service bought over 100 iPhones. They use Team Viewer to control all of them. The 100+ phones connect to 5 different hotspots, for internet access. They open up Google Maps on each phone and set the driving directions to a certain local business (the business paying for the service). Then, they literally drive to the business with all of the phones. This gets the business better Google Maps rankings, since it's "popular". Also, reviews are left using some of the accounts, as well as photos.

What makes you think that google is NOT already taking into account social media upvotes or social media popularity?

Patterns was stolen around the same time as Perl.com was stolen. I suspect it was the same individual that stole both domains as the same time, along with a few others as well.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25940240

I will never forget that day. It was Saturday morning, around 8:00am CST, and my wife and I were laying in bed, I was barely awake. We were living in East Texas at the time. It was the loudest 'boom' I've ever heard, and it shook the house a bit.

>> either ignore robots.txt or skip crawling your site.

That’s not really how it works now. Google pretty much ignores robots.txt now and crawls your site anyway.

Also I thought this was a woman:

“ Hannah has spent the past twelve years making New York City his home.”

To fix this, Google needs to stop relying on links as a search engine ranking factor--or at least not rely on it as much.

That’s awesome, great to hear.

I am not sure if you know, but domain registrars have a policy that allows the organization or company to be able to get ahold of the domain.

For example, if the domain is registered under a former employee and you cannot get ahold of that employee, the organization or company can fill out a form provided by the registrar to gain access to the domain.

This would certainly apply to you, and you should be able to get ahold of the domain name (and renew it). You will need to provide certain documents in order to prove that your organization should have access to the domain. What is required depends on the registrar.

Also, I would contact the domain registrar and tell them that you'd like to pay for the renewal (so they will change the name servers back to your previous name servers) while the details are worked out about domain ownership.

If you have any trouble with ANY of this, get in touch and I will help you get it taken care of, you should be able to find me via a search for my user id.

Agreed, it’s not okay. Some companies are found guilty of reverse domain hijacking after filing a udrp.

To defend a UDRP it’s about $10,000 plus filings fees. Typical filing fee is $1500.

That’s why I recommend getting domain name protection ahead of time for all your domain names. $10-20 a month can save you from having to pay big legal fees.