Ask Nettie: Hijacked!

May 22 2000

Q Two years ago, I acquired a domain name from Network Solutions . Now it looks like someone who doesn't work for my company is using my domain. I've received 3,000 e-mail messages to mailboxes on my domain that I didn't set up. I have no idea how this person manipulated my address. I've searched the Internet looking for ways to track down the culprit, but to no avail. What can I do?

A. Someone is trespassing on your intellectual property. This is a security breach, and it could possibly interrupt service to your customers and cost you money. You could even compare it to the denial-of-service attacks at the beginning of the year, which analysts estimate cost sites $1.2 billion in lost revenues.

The first thing to do is inform your Net service provider. Your provider has a better chance of getting your problem solved than you do, because it has relationships with the agencies that register domains.

However, if your ISP doesn't turn up anything, contact your domain-name registrar directly - in your case, Network Solutions. Ask whether your domain is still registered to you. If it isn't, it's possible that someone forged your identity to hijack it, perhaps by sending the agency a fake e-mail to change ownership.

If neither of these options resolves the matter, seek legal help. Intellectual property attorney Carl Oppedahl of Oppedahl & Larson in Dillon, Colo., takes a personal interest in these cases since an Australian company attempted to hijack his domain, patents.com.

Oppedahl followed what he calls "good domain-name practices": He regularly checked his registration records, and visited his URL every day. As a result, he caught the ownership switch before the Australian company could cause damage. He immediately sent a cease-and-desist letter to the impostors, and they backed off.

That's why Oppedahl recommends you hire an attorney. Usually, he says, a letter or two works and won't cost you an arm and a leg in legal fees. In rare circumstances, he's filed lawsuits to settle domain disputes, but he has never been to trial for one. Most cases settle out of court.

If you don't feel like being "polite" anymore, report the problem to the federal authorities - but only if you can prove that it's costing you money. San Francisco-based FBI Special Agent Andrew Black says that for a hijack to be considered a crime, it must be causing your business to suffer financially. If you can prove this, contact the FBI. The agency will open a case and investigate.

Of course, the source of your problem could be less sinister. Check your accounting records. Maybe you forgot to pay your bill, and Network Solutions might have put your domain name back on the market - it only takes three months of nonpayment. But don't be embarrassed. Even Microsoft is among the companies that have nearly lost domain names simply because they forgot to pay a bill, in this case for its Passport.com site.

If someone has snatched your domain out from under you, don't give up. You can dispute it through the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. First, though, be sure you meet the criteria: The domain name must be copyrighted, and the person who took it must have no legal right to the name and must have taken it in bad faith.

Additionally, how you register your domain can determine how safe it is from robber barons. Network Solutions says it offers three levels of security to protect your name. Go with the highest level of service, even if it means that you have to do some extra programming to make it work. Register.com recently introduced security called Domain Lock Down to protect its customers from hijackers.

Your problem might not be a case of hijacking at all, but perhaps another kind of glitch. The FBI's Black says hijacking cases are rare. Usually, it's either a configuration goof or a case of someone forgetting to pay their bill.


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