Thread

I recently found out that my domain name was illegally transferred to another host - a host in germany. Has anyone had this problem?  What steps did you take to get your domain name back. my host, bluehost, seems to be of no real help. They suggested to send the new host an email. If that doesn’t work to either go thru 2 abritration services that cost money.

THis really sucks!

I’m also wondering should I just leave Bluehost totally.

Wowch that’s bad! How exactly did the transfer go ahead without yourself being contacted then?

I would have thought that any host worth their salt would be on this very strongly, I mean after all it would pretty much be their fault if something is transferred without your knowledge or without you being contacted. You were after all paying them for hosting and then it was transferred without your knowledge.

If they are unwilling to do anything to help then I would definitely leave as they don’t sound very useful at all. I don’t know about the legality on these sorts of things but I would definitely get in touch with the second host and let them know what has happened. If they are a good host then I would have thought that they will probably put the domain on hold or something until this is all sorted out. I mean if I was the second host I wouldn’t want anyone who has illegally transferred a domain name to me being on my books because if any court action was taken against me then it would look pretty bad to the rest of the clients.

I’m sure other people on here have been through this though and probably know the legal sides of this a lot better though and so will probably chime in to help out on this one.

Sorry to hear this has happened. Hope you get it all sorted soon.

Best wishes,

Mark

Yup I had it happen to one of my customers years ago. They had it registered at Godaddy (which is why i will NEVER use them) and someone in korea managed to get the domain listed in their account. They changed the DNS pointers too.

the only reason I got this back was because it was a celebrity domain. hisname.com and I was able to prove it within 10 minutes based on legal documents. If this has just been a domain I had or something like that I’d never have gotten it back. I didn’t have any domains there at the time, all were at enom. So the legal guys created an account for me, and put the domain in my account. I immediately transferred it to enom. It’s registered to 2013 too so it was a big deal. the site is extremely popular and very busy.

Unfortunately I don’t think you’ll be so lucky since it’s transferred to a company not in the US> it’s going to boil down to how well they handle it. mine was a simple deal because the thief also had a godaddy account. It never left the registrar

Seems my host is the root of this problem. Originally, the Bluehost support team told me that someone had obtained my account information and transferred my domain. Later, their domain person told me the domain had been placed in a redemption period? and could not be extended.

What really happen is Bluehost just missed the boat on the renewal process. On the day I received an expired notice for the domain, I went to Bluehost site and immediately renewed the domain for 2 years. I received a confirmation for Bluehost that the renewal was successful.  That was on Aug 28th. However, today, I received an email that the domain was transferred. The transfer was initiated on Oct 13.

Bluehost says there is nothing they can do about the problem, but refund my $20 and set the domain to renew after it expires in a year.  I think that is unacceptable. I may be a small customer, but Bluehost’s technical and business processes allowed this issue to happen.

So Bluehost is also your domain registrar?

If you have any other domains, I would transfer them immediately, if they are contacting you on the final day, and never made contact before then? I don’t see how they wouldn’t lose every domain held there, if that’s how they are doing business, sounds like there must of been some glitch.
It’s easy to transfer other existing domains, and no reason not to after that kind of blunder.

This whole ordeal is a trip!  Yesterday, I sent emails to everyone - bluehost’s ceo, cfo, verisign, the german hosting company, the auction site that was selling my domain name, the ADR Forum, ... a ton of places. Today, I get an email from the auction site saying ...

“Thank you for contacting us at Sedo. It appears as though the domain in question is not longer registered and is available for registration. Please go to your domain’s registrar and make sure you renew the registration for this domain as a record does not exist in the Whois registry.”

So, I go check for myself and sure enough the Whois is back in my name/bluehost’s name registered as of today for 1 year. What the HECK!!

I have no clue what happen. I’m assuming when the domain was ‘released’ (how that happens I have no clue), that Bluehost had set the domain to renew after it expires - it was registered back to me today.

Still no word for Bluehost’s CEO and CFO regarding the problem. But this has me looking for a new host.

A friend sent me a link to someone else who had a similar issue.

http://www.davidairey.com/google-gmail-security-hijack/