CyberSquatting

A few years ago I completed a social media marketing course through Alison.com through which I started up a news/blog site on geek themed content I found in my daily travels through the internet. As part of that course, I created a blog through wordpress with the domain of geekFYI.com. I also created a facebook page, twitter, etc. and even created a small number of branded t-shirts for sale (not that I sold any). It was a great little hobby for a while and I really enjoyed taking the idea/brand and developing/expanding on it. It also gave me a lot of exposure and experience through Facebook marketing and content production. I engaged with some great people through Facebook who were doing similar pages, did a lot of cross promotion, made a few online friends and the facebook page ultimate gained a following of approx 15,000 people or so. I wouldn't say it was profitable in any way, I was never serious about monetising it but true to the course, I learnt a lot about online marketing, google ads, affiliate linking, blogging/wordpress, HTML, CSS, website design in general, etc. so I would say that I definitely have a small sense of pride in the whole experience.

Ultimately it got to the point where I had to ask myself whether I was getting anything out of all the time I was putting into it. It was starting to become a bit of a chore rather than a hobby. While I enjoyed the tinkering with the website (which in a way has continued through to this site), the constant promotion and content production was getting a bit tired so I decided to put it all aside. While a friend is still occasionally posting on the facebook page, I decided to let the domain registration lapse as I couldn't really justify the ongoing expenses. It is on that note that we come to my story today:
While going through my bookmarks bar in my browser I saw the link to geekFYI.com and in a sudden burst of nostalgia, decided to click on it to see what has happened to the domain - I remember after the domain initially lapsed, some company contacted me to offer to sell it back to me but I wasn't really interested at the time. Imagine my surprise when I see that it is currently being offered at nearly $50,000 USD. It seemed a bit dodgy to me that a domain I picked up for free was now classed as a 'premium' domain and they were asking for tens of thousands of dollars.

This is when I found out about the practice of CyberSquatting - When people purchase domains and offer to sell them to interested parties at ridiculous prices - I found a really great article by Hostpapa on it. I'm not saying that this is what happened in my scenario (as I am not looking to get the domain back - it was a deliberate action on me to let the rego lapse) but with the crazy sale price, I thought it had a similar vibe to it.

I found out that cybersquatting is actually illegal but the legal processes can be pretty muddy. In my case, I'm not looking to purchase the domain back. I was never a registered business or anything more than a hobby blog but through a quick search I read some pretty scary instances of the practice. On the Corney & Lind site (a legal firm) I read about a company (Ariix) that was held to ransom by an IT professional when he purchased a domain associated with the company and decided to use SEO to have it show up in search results but have it link to pornagraphic sites. For a company this would be a reputational and ultimately a sales related nightmare and it really highlights some of the major difficulties facing small business owners in todays online world. While laws may exist in many countries, by the time it got through courts (at an expense) the damage is already done. It's a great but unfortunate demonstration of how people who understand specific systems go on to game/exploit them in bad faith for financial gain. If only their knowledge could be used for good rather than evil.