as far as i remember registrars can reserve (buy, snap, ...) domain names and delete them again 5 days later without needing to pay. during that time they can measure and profit from traffic for the domains. some registrars let their people do this without reflecting it in whois.
>the complex systems behind the registration, transfer and deletion of addresses making something simple complicated gives more room for dirty tricks. coming to your multimedia home-theaters soon ;-) that Verisign /NSI is breaking the same contracts in far more persistent and damaging ways will of course not be published by their US-government mandated protectors ICANN. and OpenSRS is waiting for the pertinent correspondence promised to them for last easter ;) elliot, if you want to be taken seriously by the cabale in power, you will need to launch the lawsuits now. but business as usual trickles nice little pennies even to us, so why move ? kind regards philippe, http://InternetRoots.com --- *** --- >http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174465.html ICANN Warns Firms Of Domain-Registration Back Doors By Steven Bonisteel, Newsbytes WASHINGTON, D.C., U.S.A., 13 Feb 2002, 8:39 AM CST The organization with authority over some of the Net's most popular domain-name real estate has issued a warning to authorized Internet address marketers who let other companies dip into the domain registration system. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) - which is responsible for such generic top-level domain (gTLD) spaces as dot-com, dot-net and dot-info - issued an advisory Tuesday reminding companies accredited to process domain registrations that they are not allowed to let unauthorized third parties get their hands on the complex systems behind the registration, transfer and deletion of addresses. It's been an open secret for some time that some of the registrars accredited by ICANN to serve on the front lines of the domain- registration system have been renting out their access to that system to other outfits, such as domain-name speculators. But ICANN reminded registrars Tuesday that providing registry access to third parties could violate their ICANN agreements "and jeopardize their continued accreditation." "ICANN considers registrar compliance with accreditation agreements to be a high priority," the authority said, adding that it would "exercise its right ... to audit registrar records as appropriate." ICANN did not name accredited registrars suspected of opening the registry system to third parties. Instead, it said that, "based on recent communications with registrars, it has become apparent that some ICANN-accredited registrars may be inappropriately lending their access to registries to third-party proxies. "While registrars are permitted to enter into reseller arrangements with agents that assist them in providing service to customers, registrars are not permitted otherwise to lend access to their connections directly to entities that are not accredited registrars." Access-lending appears to be popular among domain-name speculators vying for the attractive monikers that become available when their current owners fail to renew their registrations. Access-lending allows a speculator to snap up those addresses directly. "One registrar recently reported that it was unaware that it was responsible for hundreds of domain registrations that had been added to and then deleted from the registry without the registrar's participation," ICANN said in its advisory. "The registrations had been processed through a machine provided by a third party that had been installed on the registrar's network. "The third party was using the machine's access to the registry to add domain registrations into the registry on behalf of the third party's customers. Those customers had not agreed to enter into the registrar's registration agreement. Indeed, it appears the registrar had no relationship with the customers involved. "The registrar apparently did not have any record of the domains that had been registered (and subsequently deleted) through its systems."
