Many real estate agents were contacted recently by a company that claimed that other parties were about to register similar domain names to the ones the agents already had registered, prompting some to panic and sign up for variations of their domain names they really didn't need.

According to a news report, a company known as National Domain Name Registry, Electronic Domain Name Monitoring and Corporate Domain Name Monitoring has duped at least 27,000 Web-site owners. Real estate agents counted among the many business owners who were fooled.

The Federal Trade Commission says that faxes sent by the company to Web-site owners were deceptive on two levels: First, registrations for domain names are instantaneous. If a third-party wanted a variation of someone's domain name, they could obtain one with no waiting, and certainly would not wait for the original domain name owner to be contacted. Second, no third parties had asked to register the variations. If they had, they would not have been subjected to any delay.

A lawsuit was filed against the company.

Published: February 15, 2001

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