
Well, I lost brand-colors.com - reimertz
https://github.com/reimertz/brand-colors/issues/64
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mekane8
I recently went to renew a domain I own that I was getting notifications
about, and discovered that my other two versions of the same domain (i.e. the
.net and .org ones) had already expired but I wasn't getting any emails about
those! So yeah, double and triple check those notification settings!

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martin_a
How can you even "lose" it. Don't know if this differs for other domains, but
for .de-domains you do need an auth code for the transfer.

This code is only generated once you initiate the transfer of a domain to
another hoster. Not sure about the mechanics behind it, but if you enter a
wrong auth code with the new hoster, the domain will not be transferred.

Not sure if you could bruteforce those codes, but that would still need
somebody to start the transfer...

So what happened here? Did he get hacked? Or did he just forget to pay for the
domain name and it expired?

edit: If he forgot to pay I can't really feel sorry. If you don't pay for
stuff, you'll get it taken from you.

~~~
reimertz
Yeah. You are very correct. I don’t deserve anyone’s sympathy here, but I hope
one or two can learn from my misstake to not trust your eyes when it comes to
domain ownership. Verify everything and set up multiple notifications and
remainders!

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jevgeni
Can someone explain the relevance of this?

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reimertz
Sorry. It’s just a very shitty situation to spend so much time on a open
source project and pay for a domain to then see someone being smart enough to
clone your project, host it so you won’t be able to distinguish it from the
previous page till you lost the ownership of said domain.

I know, it’s all my fault. But I guess I hope it could be a lesson for other
people that hosts open source projects. A visual verification/check of a
static page is not enough to be sure you own it.

~~~
reimertz
Which is obvious of course. But if it’s “obvious” for you that all of your
payment details are properly set up and up to date, a visual check every now
and might feel sufficient.

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Brain2000
Could someone from the amazon representing the entire rainforest be able to
take over a certain domain?

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giarc
How did you lose it? Did you let the domain expire and fail to renew?

~~~
reimertz
No. It’s definitely my own fault. Notifications was sent to another domain
that expired that was created using the “google get a domain, email, docs,
sheets whatever at the same time”. Forwarded emails stopped getting forwarded.

Sadly, I usually check my domains every now and then, but because the new
owner copy-pasted my site, I couldn’t tell when doing a quick visual check.

It was after the 3 months grace period I realized there was some spam on the
page. I reached out to godaddy to get told someone else bought it through
their “auction service” once I missed my window and that was it.

So I deserved it, for sure. Just never thought I would end up getting
bamboozled, someone copy-paste my site to make it look legit past the grace
period.

~~~
tzs
It might be worth talking to a lawyer about this who is familiar with domain
ownership issues and with IP.

I wasn't able to find any registered trademark (in the US) for "brand-colors",
"brand-colors.com", or "brand colors", but a very brief look at the ICANN
trademark dispute rules did not turn up any requirement that it be a
registered trademark. Maybe I just missed that part, but if I didn't you might
be able to get it back on trademark grounds.

The usual hard part of this is showing that the person who has the domain
registered now is using it in bad faith. In your case, the fact that the first
thing they did was put up a copy of your site, almost certainly in violation
of copyright, and then changed links to ones to make themselves money from
people thinking they were at your site should be enough to easily show bad
faith.

~~~
chrismcb
It is an open source project, so no copyright issues. And the op stopped
paying for the domain. I don't see any legal leg to stand on here.

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ricc
Sorry to hear about this. If you don’t have any other recourse, just charge
this to experience and move on. Everyone makes mistakes so I hope you take
this well.

