How Many .com Domain Names Are Unused? (singaporedatacompany.com)
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Christopher Forno, CTO at Singapore Data Company writes: When looking for .com names, I've been frustrated by how many are already taken but appear to be unused. It can feel like people are registering every pronounceable combination of letters in every major language, and even the unpronounceable short ones. Is there rampant domain speculation, or do I just think of the same names as everyone else? Let's look at the data.
There are currently 137 million .com domain names registered. Of these, roughly 1/3 are in use (businesses, personal websites, email, etc.), another 1/3 appear to be unused, and the last 1/3 are used for a variety of speculative purposes. I started by crawling a random sample of the domains from the top-level .com DNS zone file, until reaching 100,000 valid domains. [...] For most categories I've included a random sample of screenshots from that category, excluding redundant ones: Content (31% or ~43 million), Ads (23% or ~31 million), No Web Server (11% or ~16 million), Empty (9.2% or ~13 million), For Sale (7.1% or ~9.8 million), Error (5.7% or ~7.9 million), Parked (4.8% or ~6.5 million), Gambling (3.0% or ~4 million), Mail (2.6% or ~3.5 million), Redirect (1.1% or ~1.6 million), Private (0.64% or ~0.9 million), and Porn (0.59% or ~0.8 million).
There are currently 137 million .com domain names registered. Of these, roughly 1/3 are in use (businesses, personal websites, email, etc.), another 1/3 appear to be unused, and the last 1/3 are used for a variety of speculative purposes. I started by crawling a random sample of the domains from the top-level .com DNS zone file, until reaching 100,000 valid domains. [...] For most categories I've included a random sample of screenshots from that category, excluding redundant ones: Content (31% or ~43 million), Ads (23% or ~31 million), No Web Server (11% or ~16 million), Empty (9.2% or ~13 million), For Sale (7.1% or ~9.8 million), Error (5.7% or ~7.9 million), Parked (4.8% or ~6.5 million), Gambling (3.0% or ~4 million), Mail (2.6% or ~3.5 million), Redirect (1.1% or ~1.6 million), Private (0.64% or ~0.9 million), and Porn (0.59% or ~0.8 million).
Ooh! Ooh! I know! (Score:4, Insightful)
”Is there rampant domain speculation, or do I just think of the same names as everyone else?”
Yes and yes.
Re:Ooh! Ooh! I know! (Score:5, Informative)
About a decade ago, I was trying to think of a domain name to register for a website. I wrote a short program to put together English phonemes [wikipedia.org] to generate every possible pronounceable word (up to 7 letters).. Then I had the program do a whois database lookup [icann.org] for each fictional word as a .com domain, outputting a list of the unregistered domains. (Yeah, I'm probably part of the reason why ICANN now makes you solve a captcha before doing a whois lookup).
.com domains were gone. Most of the 5-letter domains were gone too, and the few which weren't sounded horrible. Most of the 2-syllable 6-letter domains were gone. But there were lots of 3-syllable 6-letter domains still available. There were lots of 7-letter domains still available. So many that I killed the program part-way through (at domains starting with the letter 'f' if I remember). The list of available domains it was generating was becoming so long it would've taken me too much time to look through it, trying to find one that seemed decent.
All the 4-letter
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Sounds like a good time to jump on that four-syllable, eight-letter "cocacola.com" name I've been meaning to register!
Re:Ooh! Ooh! I know! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Network Solutions used to do that (maybe they still do). Not to bid up the cost of the domain, per se; but to force you to use their registration services.
Re: Ooh! Ooh! I know! (Score:2)
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Did you try... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Did you try... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a mistake to assume just because there is no web page the domain is inactive.
Not all active domains carry public web pages. I have a number of domains that I only use for email and other non-web things such as game servers or have web pages on non standard ports and require authentication for special uses such as my private family photo archive.
goatrape.com (Score:5, Funny)
I was going to make a joke about goatrape.com not being taken. Then i checked to make sure. That was a mistake.
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And was that mistake the greatest of all times?
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I've got 3 domains for business use that don't have public-facing anything, and a third one that I did at least put up a parking page for.
1 of them will have an active site this year, another one, probably next year.
In the past I've had at least 4 or 5 that eventually expired without ever having hosted anything. Not "domain speculation," merely "business name speculation." No, I never tried to sell any of them.
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'Looks like TFA did look at the DNS record, which is the thing to look at, if you are trying to determine if the D is being used.
obvious.com (Score:4, Insightful)
Same as Land in the US, only tiny fraction is used while 100% is owned by someone. Domain names are just internet real estate, wouldn't expect it to be any other way.
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"Domain names are just internet real estate, wouldn't expect it to be any other way."
Still offensive, and the worst offenders are registrar squatters. It's like filing for a trademark, and the government burning your application and filing for it themselves. Registrars should be prohibited from owning more than one domain.
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Squatters don't matter very much, their antics don't survive a trademark registration.
Wonder how many empty and error just don't have in (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of servers we do security for have stuff at http://domain.com/employeeport... [domain.com] and http://domain.com/he/ [domain.com] or whatever, but nothing on the index page.
Another chunk are non-web servers. Domains aren't just for web sites, of course. Others are only accessible from certain networks and VPNs, something like DellTeamNet.com for Dell employees or whatever.
I wonder how many of the "empty", "error", "unused", and "no web server" are actually used - just not for a public web site with a normal index page.
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Yeah, I have always ever used my domains for e-mail or DDNS for remote access and custom web services. I have never put up a web site on any of them.
Does that mean my domains are "unused"?
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Does that mean my domains are "unused"?
It does to the people who want your domain. I have my own domain for email and have had several requests to purchase it (for peanuts, I might add) since "it wasn't in use" due to a lack of web presence.
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Domains aren't just for web sites, of course.
Indeed. I have a short .com domain that is only used for my for personal email.
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Not quite a 3-letter domain, but this one is provably real: milk.com [milk.com].
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Isn't that what subdomains are for? I.e. instead of registering the separate domain 'dellteamnet.com' they could have stuck it at teamnet.dell.com.
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You are assuming that the silos can coordinate with each other efficiently.... Never the case in a mega corp....
Easier for the remote access team to set up their own domain than to try to navigate the waters necessary to open and maintain a sub-domain.
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And even when the silos do communicate, things like trust chains and business units can make it a pain.
While dellteamnet.com might be ambiguous, it might actually be for intranet.storage.marketing.dell.com. For my company, we have two legacy domain names (.com and .net) or our original, rediculously long domain name (20 characters... only took us a month to justify paying for a 6-letter domain), and two backup domains that likely should be retired. That is for just 50 people...
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Yeah, I have domains where the base domain just gives a 403 but subdomains are used for various things, or / gives a 403 but other URLs have content on them. My wife's e-mail is on a domain with that server a placeholder page with two sentences of text on it. I had someone asking to buy it off me as I'm clearly not using it and she didn't understand that there are more services than web sites.
"No Web Server" (Score:3)
There are plenty of domains in heavy use for things other than the Web. Classifying these as "unused" is probably not right.
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Same here. No http server on a domain doesn't mean it's unused.
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Same here. No http server on a domain doesn't mean it's unused.
Same thing applies to a stale web page. Just because a web page is stale doen't meant that the domain isn't in use for other services, such as email.
How do they know it's not in use? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Port scan it?
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Such a name might be associated with email addresses, for instance, but still might not resolve to any IP address. What do you call it, if not a domain name?
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So what do you call the 'bar.com' part of an email address "foo@bar.com", for example, it not a domain name?
Such a name might be associated with email addresses, for instance
Completely correct.
but still might not resolve to any IP address.
Incorrect.
In your example, it wouldn't resolve to a web server (e.g. an A or AAAA DNS record), but it would still resolve to a mail server (e.g. an MX DNS record). If it doesn't resolve to a server at all, then the AC would be correct: it isn't a domain name in any practical sense, since the entire purpose of a domain name is to act as a map back to an IP address.
As such, going back a few posts in the thread, if you want to portscan a domain, you just do a DNS lookup to see what IP addres
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Okay, but you do recognize that it’d still have an IP address, right? And that it’s discoverable? That’s what this whole thread has been about: whether or not you can port scan a domain with no web presence. Clearly you can, just not in the way that you were thinking.
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First of all, you can use only private DNS to get the IP.
Second, the domain portion of the email address is still the domain, regardless of if the mail is currently deliverable.
Third, the owner of the domain is in control of the DNS. It resolves to a mail server if I say so, not simply because an email address exists that references it. Perhaps the email address was routable in the past; or perhaps it will be routable in the future. Maybe it is only routable on Fridays.
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I have 2 that don't even have DNS set up.
They are absolutely "in use," and I would die on that hill to protect my right to them.
Re:How do they know it's not in use? (Score:5, Informative)
How do they know it's not in use?
He says if no web-server was running, he went by DNS records.
Just because a domain doesn't have a website doesn't mean that it isn't used for something.
From his report, he has two categories for "No A record but does have MX" and "No MX record but does have A records with no apparent web server"
Mail (2.6% or ~3.5 million)
Any domain not in any other category, but with MX DNS records (for email), I categorized as Mail. I did not attempt to see if the mail server was working or if delivery was possible. It's possible that many of these domains are not actually used for email, but I've given them the benefit of the doubt.
No Web Server (11% or ~16 million)
If I was unable to connect to, or receive a valid response from, port 80 or 443 for either the top-level domain or the www subdomain and the domain had no MX records, I placed the domain in this category. Some of these domains likely have some non-web use, such as an FTP or video game server, but I expect them to be a small fraction. Additionally, the crawling server was only configured for IPv4, so any IPv6-only websites would have been grouped here.
It would seem all the other categories were determined from data returned by a web server.
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No, it does not. Some domains are exclusively email domains, for instance, and doing an name lookup will not resolve to any IP address.
If such domains are not in use, how is email sent and received through them?
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and doing an name lookup will not resolve to any IP address.
If it is a domain for email it better have at least an MX record (or whatever the IPv6 equivalent is), even if it has no A or AAAA. That's "resolving".
If such domains are not in use, how is email sent and received through them?
If the name does not resolve to any IP address, how is email sent to it?
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If the name does not resolve to any IP address, how is email sent to it?
One obvious answer that everybody on slashdot should already know; mail can be sent from systems with the right hosts file!
Or in general, you don't have to send mail out through a mail gateway, your mail client can instead connect directly to the recipient server.
You might have a setup where email can be routed normally inside a private network, but from the outside you have to know the IP. Like for an emergency sysadmin contact in case the private network is down, in a situation where normally everything i
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One obvious answer that everybody on slashdot should already know; mail can be sent from systems with the right hosts file!
And being /., the pedantic answer to that is that's resolving the name into an address -- just not using public name servers. One assumes, however, that when one seeks to determine if an address is "in use", or tries sending email to it and it is not locally controlled, the public DNS system will be used.
Or in general, you don't have to send mail out through a mail gateway, your mail client can instead connect directly to the recipient server.
And if the domain does not resolve, how does one determine the recipient server? Yes, yes, local systems can do a lot of things locally.
You might have a setup where email can be routed normally inside a private network, but from the outside you have to know the IP.
So the name resolves -- locally -- but not globally, and then I'll ask
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My advice, if you don't know those answers, don't worry about that level of detail.
It isn't really reasonable to expect to be taught how to sysadmin in the comments.
All of your questions are circular or simply don't need answers; "If you can't make it to the store using a flying car, how do you buy Marmite?" It doesn't need an answer, because not everybody wants Marmite in the first place, and there are other ways to get to a store. Obviously, the use cases are different between having public DNS, and not h
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A domain can exist for the sole purpose of sheltering subdomains.
Those snowflake subdomains should get a thicker skin and learn to live on the Internet like the rest of the domains.
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They think they are AmerICANNTs, instead of AmerICANNs.
Public www is not the only use case for domains (Score:2, Interesting)
How many of these might be domains that are used only for email or other services other than www?
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I'd say a LOT of them are... There are a lot of reasons to buy and keep a domain, but not field a web server. Squatting is likely the majority of the problem for common or "sounds like" domain names, but like others have pointed out, "homesteading" (where the domain is parked for future use, or just doesn't have a webserver) is a huge fraction of this.
Interesting (Score:2)
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Squatters (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Squatters (Score:5, Informative)
Back in the first internet boom (when we wore onions on our belts since it was the style at the time) a startup registered the 20,000 most common US surnames as .com domains. They were selling email accounts. In the inevitable bankruptcy the whole thing was sold to Tucows.
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There oughta be some kind of term limit in place if you don't actually use a domain for a period of time.
I think a point being made in this discussion is that it is hard to determine that a domain isn't being used. I have a domain that I've held for twenty-five years. It has a DNS entry, and it has an MX record to a mail server. Is it "in use"? Is that all it takes? Then your "term limit" is so trivially met that it is meaningless.
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Re: Squatters (Score:2)
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So I bought the [MYLASTNAME].ca instead for ~10$ CA
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LOL.. .com is actually in use, even though my last name is exceedingly rare in the USA. The issue I see is that the SAME business has .com .biz and .org.
Personally, I think ICAN should make it so any legitimate claimant to a domain name can force an entity who has the same domain registered in multiple top level domains to give up one. So, in my case, the business would be required to give me their choice of .com, .biz or .org as I have a legitimate claim to the domain name.
Re: Squatters (Score:3)
I seem to recall various laws on the books rendering cyber squating largely illegal. Squatters are legally required to surrender the domain, as squatters typically cannot justify ownership of a domain.
The question isn't whether they should give one of the alternate TLDs up. The question is whether your organization has been around for longer than the owner, to have a claim and prior
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These days .Com is a rather generic entity, similar to .net, and simply implies a web presence.
What you infer is not actually implied.
The .biz tld implies a smaller company or startup,
Again, what you infer is not what is implied. Unless the registrar for the (.com) or (.biz) domains have strict, enforced rules about who can register in those TLD, you can't infer what you are inferring.
I think they should return to such, BTW. My uni has apparently registered a name in SPAIN (.es), even though the really short name it makes is not spelled correctly. AND they're using it as the signup site in a process to force employees to register for 2FA, because
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as I have a legitimate claim to the domain name.
You don't have any sort of claim, legitimate or not.
The feeling of desiring something doesn't imply that you have a claim to it.
In the reverse, if the business has a trademark and you've got one of those domains, they might have a claim to it if it isn't your full legal name; ie, including middle name or initial as displayed on the relevant legal documents. (birth certificate, marriage license, name changer order)
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I looked into getting cardot.com with the idea of running slashcode or similar and having an automotive discussion site. It's being squatted by Uniregistry [wikipedia.org], and I hope Frank Schilling fucking chokes on it.
Domain squatters should go up against the wall first when the revolution comes.
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$35/yr is a little high, but not outrageous
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BTW, they aren't offering to let you rent your surname domain. They're offering you a single email address @ your surname domain for $35/year.
Where have you been? (Score:1)
" Is there rampant domain speculation"
Did you just get started on the internet? Where have you been the last 30 years? Under a rock? I remember 20 years ago trying to get a good domain name was a nightmare... I guess now it's impossible.
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I don't have that much trouble finding domains.
IME it is actually easier to find open domain names than unused trademarks, so it is mostly a non-issue; without using it as a trademark, somebody else can do so and then take it. So the bottleneck is the trademark.
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advertisement much (Score:1)
However a CTO who does not know even the most fundamental basics of the internet, or expects to buy a .com domain in 2019, does not the best advertisement make.
I mean, I fully expect his next post to ask who are these 'hackers' that broke into into his Windows 3.11 computers and stole all his data. I fully expect him to be shocked, I tell you shocked, that someone thug could or world log onto an innocent person remote disks an downl
All 3-4 letter combinations taken (Score:4, Informative)
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godaddy is the culprit (Score:5, Informative)
Years back I tried an experiment: put a domain name in a browser and not no response. Went to GoDaddy to register it and was told it was taken. Tried in the browser again and got a 'this address is for sale!' banner and an email to the address I had given GD offering to sell it to me within minutes. GD pretty much exists to suck up domain names people submit and then try to sell their idea back to them.
Re:godaddy is the culprit (Score:4, Informative)
If this is truly the case then you should be able to put together a reproducible test of randomized words into a domain. At that point you could document it and possibly even automate it. Once it's that obvious you can get some attention from media, ICANN and/or some other places.
Re: godaddy is the culprit (Score:2)
+1 interesting
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It usually takes a little more than just trying to resolve the domain name. It is well known that some domain registrars reserve domains that you look up through their web site (e.g. to see if they're available). There's even a name for it: domain name front running [wikipedia.org].
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It was legal and reasonable speculation just like any other. Some made money, most lost a l
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Years back I tried an experiment: put a domain name in a browser and not no response. Went to GoDaddy to register it and was told it was taken. Tried in the browser again and got a 'this address is for sale!' banner and an email to the address I had given GD offering to sell it to me within minutes. GD pretty much exists to suck up domain names people submit and then try to sell their idea back to them.
Did you follow up and look up the WHOIS info on the domain to see if it indeed had been registered just right then? Maybe they just had not yet pointed the DNS to their parking page for some stupid reason.
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Did you follow up and look up the WHOIS info on the domain to see if it indeed had been registered just right then?
Or it had been registered already, just didn't have a web server running on the naked domain name IP address. Nothing says that "example.com" and "www.example.com" must resolve to the same address, nor does anything require "example.com" to run a web server at all.
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I've had an enom reseller account for over 15 years, and this has never happened to me.
A few times I used the linux command-line whois tool, which queried whois.verisign-grs.com and it never happened to me there, either.
But when a business asks you to call them "Daddy," expect to get treated the way you'd expect to get treated.
They are all gone (Score:3)
Man, I can't even get a name for my startup company, even furryballsploppedmenacinglyonthetableinc.com is being park squated by a registrar!
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Creation Date: 2018-07-09T11:04:15Z
Registrant Country: ZA
$ HEAD furryballsploppedmenacinglyonthetableinc.com
...
403 Forbidden
Client-Warning: Redirect loop detected (max_redirect = 7)
Highly unlikely to be a registrar squatting on it; doesn't display a sales page.
Kawhoosh! (Score:2)
Inside vs Outside (Score:2)
Last company had hundreds of internal subdomains almost none of which have any external visibility to the casual "Internet Researcher"
Externally some domains were just redirects for companies that had been absorbed, or products no longer supported.
That being said, there are a lot of people who spend their lottery scratchers money on squatting on domains, and will probably end up with just as much profit over time.
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Well, yes. (Score:2)
There is and there has been for a couple of decades. Welcome to the Internet. It's a wonderful place. You may like it here.
Porn Sites Primarily Chinese? (Score:3)
Defensive as well (Score:2)
I work with a 501(c)3 nonprofit. We operate our website off of the .org domain, but also own .com, .net, and .info for defensive purposes. We don’t want someone else to grab them and do something nefarious with them. I should actually check to see if those redirect back to our .org
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Well, peta.net doesn't appear to redirect. So I suppose People Eating Tasty Animals might still e able to grab that one.
wwf.net doesn't redirect properly. So maybe the World Wrestling Federation could pick that one up.
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Yeah, we're much smaller than those... But I operate a tight IT ship.
Some are used internally (Score:2)
Three letter domain redirect (Score:2)
There's a three-letter domain owned by some friends of mine that does nothing but redirect to a page on my own website (with my permission). I've had several people contact me to try to buy the three letter domain, even though a quick whois would have given them the real domain owner's info.
Just Bot It. (Score:2)
How do you know it's unused? (Score:2)
Well how do you know the domain name you want is unused?
Did you scan every port on the address it pointed to?
Did you check all DNS entries to see if there is an active subdomain?
Did you check the MX records to see if someone's getting email from it?
Did you check with all products out there to see if someone didn't just block that domain because they produce a product that relies on hijacking DNS in order to configure, and they registered the domain to ensure they don't end up trampling on a legitimate site?
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Once I got it set up, I started receiving e-mail that was directed at the company in question.
I once owned the .com version of the name used by a .net ISP. It was pretty funny trying to explain to a Granny why her email to her grandkids was being read by someone else. She just didn't get the concept that X.com and X.net were two very different things. I was also on the Microsoft Developer's Mailing list -- as someone at the .net site who gave them the wrong address. Ignorance of the difference between .com and .net says lots about Microsoft Developers.
I eventually got tired of the problem and sold
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What amazes me is that so many people know about the problem, but don't know which companies do it, and which don't.
I can't imagine facing this situation, and not spending the time to do a little research and do some tests to find a good company.