> Forgive me for being naive or perhaps a little thick but why would someone > use someone else's credit card to register their web site for ten years. > Surely they know they would get caught and cannot use the web site. I can > see someone buying a tangible item that thye can caryy away and use at > their leisure but web site is a public thing. How can they get a way with > it or even believe they could? Isn't it like buying insurance under false > pretenses: when it comes time to use it the insurance policy is found to be > invalid.
If they do get a successful registration, there is a possibility that they can keep the domain name. They count on the cardholder not noticing the charge *or* not reporting it within the first 60 days of registration while the domain is not transferrable. Also, the process of notifying the merchant (i.e. you) about the questionable charge as reported by the card holder takes time which benefits the registrant as well. Once the domain is succssfully transferred away from the original registrar where the fraud occurred, there isn't much that can be done, short of a court order. > I just don't understand why and how so many (9/10!) of these could happen. > Perhaps I am missing something. 9 out of 10 (i.e. 90%) ten year registrations being fraudulent is not the norm. I just did a quick analysis of the past two years (January 15, 2000 to present) and I see 11% (or 1 out of 9) of ten year registrations cancelled by our staff. I won't suggest that all of these cancellation were due to fraud as there could be other legitimate reasons for cancellation. However I would suspect many of them were fraud attempts. -Bill
