SoccerDad41 writes: I am a systems administrator for an Indiana-based bricks-n-clicks retailer currently suspended because an unscrupulous typosquatter stole my name and registration information for his/her fraudulent domain registration.
Among my normal duties are maintaining domain registrations where I am listed by name as the account contact in the WhoIs information. Additional contact info in WhoIs are my Registrar's mailing address, phone number & an anonymized email address.
My company hired a third party service to protect their trademark by identifying and terminating infringin web sites. The third party identified a domain name, performed a WhoIs lookup & issued a complaint in compliance within ICANN's rules. This was presumably all reported back to our Legal department and it was noticed that the name on the domain registration matched mine. I have a locally uncommon ethnic last name so an immediate connection to me was made & although I protested my absolute innocence in the matter, I have been suspended on grounds of violating non-compete policies pending proof that it isn't me. If my name were James Smith or if a VP's name had been used it might not have come to this.
The fraudulent domain registration was made with a different registrar (let's call them Registrar B) than the one my company uses (let's call them Registrar A). The public parts of the registration information at Registrar B match pretty exactly those of my legitimate domain registrations at Registrar A, including Registrar A's mailing address and phone number. The only things left out in the mailing address are the reference to a domain name and ATTN: Registrar A. Of course the anonymized email address differs as well.
This might all have been avoided with Private Registration, which will be implemented as soon as I am reinstated.
As soon as I can speak to a human being at either Registrar B or the arbitrator handling the domain dispute I plan to ask if it makes any sense. Why would a person savvy enough with typosquatting be dumb enough to include their real name in the registration, especially when they have included an incorrect mailing address and phone number? It seems to me that this is transparently fraudulent and my (current) employer is clearly not getting their moneys worth from the trademark protector company.
Surely I'm not the first in the Slashdot community to find myself in this situation. I'd like to avoid incurring the cost of a lawyer but I am intent on maintaining my good name and continued employment. What are my rights and responsibilities in this matter? What is my best course of action? How did you resolve this issue? How can I prove it's not me?
This might all have been avoided with Private Registration, which will be implemented as soon as I am reinstated.
Surely I'm not the first in the Slashdot community to find myself in this situation. I'd like to avoid incurring the cost of a lawyer but I am intent on maintaining my good name and continued employment. What are my rights and responsibilities in this matter? What is my best course of action? How did you resolve this issue? How can I prove it's not me?
jamie writes: "The Defense Department is attempting to buy the entire first printing — 10,000 copies — of a memoir by a controversial former Defense Intelligence Agency officer so that the book can be destroyed, according to military and other sources."
epee1221 writes: Markus Persson, a.k.a. Notch, the developer of Minecraft posted in the development blog today that PayPal limited his account with unspecified cause on August 25th. Since then, payments for the alpha version of Minecraft have continued accumulating while Notch has been unable to withdraw them, and the account now contains over €600,000. PayPal recently told him it may take up to two more weeks for things to get sorted out and that if they conclude that there is funny business involved, they will keep the money.