I guess this is a cautionary tale.

I was recently having issues with my Gmail account that’s tied to my Epik ( a domain registrar ) account, so when I was supposed to renew my domain, I didn’t receive any e-mails about it. When I decided to randomly check on my website, it seemed to be down. So I checked Epik and a domain that usually cost £15 a year to renew now cost £400 to renew as it was expired.

As a teenager who does not have £400 to spend on a domain, I decided to just wait until the domain fully expired and buy it for a cheaper price.

After some time, the domain fully expired and GoDaddy decided to buy it as soon as it did, and charged me £2,225 to renew the domain. I don’t understand how a price that large is justified, considering that my website gets barely any visitors and I basically only use the domain for hosting stuff. No idea how hiking prices this much is legal

  • VonReposti@feddit.dkEnglish
    2·
    4 months ago

    I simply don’t get why domain squatting is legal. On my ccTLD it is absolutely illegal meaning you have to forfeit the domain if you don’t use it anymore.

    • kitnaht@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      Just because you don’t have a website up at [XYZ].com doesn’t mean you’re not using it. You could have a domain controller on the back end doing file services, or you could be using it for network auth, etc. Not all .coms exist for the purpose of putting up a website.

      • VonReposti@feddit.dkEnglish
        1·
        4 months ago

        Neither do .dk domains, but in order to determine use the courts will have to be involved. I haven’t heard about a lot of those cases, but I’d guess you can prove use against the person who wants to take the domain. If I have a domain called firstnamelastname.dk it’d be pretty easy to show that I got a mail address at contact@firstnamelastname.dk that’s in use.

        • towerful@programming.devEnglish
          1·
          4 months ago

          Other services will be reflected by active DNS records.

          If the only DNS record points to a “Buy this domain” webpage, I think it’s fair to argue that is misuse.
          Doubley so if it turns out many unrelated domains are owned by and point to the same webpage, and it’s just doing a js hostname thing to make it seem relevant to the current address