Had a website registered for my dad -- and it just occured to me that he hasn't bugged me to renew it.
I checked my records: It expired in Sept. '06!! And it's been snagged by some company that is now listing it as 'for sale'
Is there any way to recover it?
*UPDATE*
Lessons learned:
* if it happens to you, you're screwed
-- youremailaddress@yourdomain GONE!
* if the aquiring company was a scammer, they could scam all your customers
-- your history/reputation GONE!
And the best advice to others I can come up with.... *drumroll*....
* keep domains renewed for multiple years!
-- $8.88 would have prevented this whole ordeal
Luckily, my dad's site was a work-in-progress, with no real customers. The site has/had very little traffic and doesn't show up much on search engines -- so I'll hope the new owner loses interest in it and let's it expire.
Had it been fully functional with lots of customers, imagine trying to convince them doing business with some *new* domain.
(WARNING) I also remembered that it was linked to a paypal account -- but *luckily* got to it in time and changed the email address it's tied to. Had the new domain owner got to it they could have clicked on the "forgot my password" link to snag my dad's paypal info.
I've thought of that idea in relation to online purchases and using junk-email addresses at hotmail or yahoo -- which eventually expire. If they get picked up by an unscrupulous person, they could potentially steal identities.
Well.... I'm still bummed out. But hopefully my experience saves someone here from a really big headache.
I checked my records: It expired in Sept. '06!! And it's been snagged by some company that is now listing it as 'for sale'
Is there any way to recover it?
*UPDATE*
Lessons learned:
* if it happens to you, you're screwed
-- youremailaddress@yourdomain GONE!
* if the aquiring company was a scammer, they could scam all your customers
-- your history/reputation GONE!
And the best advice to others I can come up with.... *drumroll*....
* keep domains renewed for multiple years!
-- $8.88 would have prevented this whole ordeal
Luckily, my dad's site was a work-in-progress, with no real customers. The site has/had very little traffic and doesn't show up much on search engines -- so I'll hope the new owner loses interest in it and let's it expire.
Had it been fully functional with lots of customers, imagine trying to convince them doing business with some *new* domain.
(WARNING) I also remembered that it was linked to a paypal account -- but *luckily* got to it in time and changed the email address it's tied to. Had the new domain owner got to it they could have clicked on the "forgot my password" link to snag my dad's paypal info.
I've thought of that idea in relation to online purchases and using junk-email addresses at hotmail or yahoo -- which eventually expire. If they get picked up by an unscrupulous person, they could potentially steal identities.
Well.... I'm still bummed out. But hopefully my experience saves someone here from a really big headache.
