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Joe Jobbed in the Domain Name Space

Today I received an interesting letter from "Domain Registry of America" telling me that the registration on a domain of mine "stefy72.com" is about to expire.

Well gee, that's odd, I've never registered a domain like that. Moreover, it has the stinky smell of a fishing site or some such.

whois shows:

oxygen:>whois -h whois.melbourneit.com stefy72.com

Domain Name.......... stefy72.com
Creation Date........ 2005-11-03
Registration Date.... 2005-11-03
Expiry Date.......... 2006-11-03
Organisation Name.... Jerry Altzman
Organisation Address. (My whole home address here)
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. New York
Organisation Address. (my whole address)
Organisation Address. NY
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES

Admin Name........... Jerry Altzman
Admin Address........ (my home address here)
Admin Address........
Admin Address........ New York
Admin Address........ 11234
Admin Address........ NY
Admin Address........ UNITED STATES
Admin Email.......... sstefy72@yahoo.com
Admin Phone.......... +1.(my business phone number here)
Admin Fax............

Tech Name............ YahooDomains TechContact
Tech Address......... 701 First Ave.
Tech Address.........
Tech Address......... Sunnyvale
Tech Address......... 94089
Tech Address......... CA
Tech Address......... UNITED STATES
Tech Email........... domain.tech@YAHOO-INC.COM
Tech Phone........... +1.6198813096
Tech Fax.............
Name Server.......... yns1.yahoo.com
Name Server.......... yns2.yahoo.com

Yow. Who's this sstefy72@yahoo.com clown? I don't have a clue.
It appears that the site has vanished off the face of the earth, as well:

oxygen:>dig ns sstefy72.com

; <<>> DiG 9.2.4 <<>> ns sstefy72.com
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 1287
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;sstefy72.com. IN NS

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
com. 900 IN SOA a.gtld-servers.net. nstld.verisign-grs.com. 1148320538 1800 900 604800 900

;; Query time: 33 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.128.100#53(192.168.128.100)
;; WHEN: Mon May 22 13:55:54 2006
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 103

oxygen:>

I've contacted MelbourneIT and Yahoo!, who knows what will come of this? I wonder how many other domains my home name and address appear on?

What's really cute is that the address is up-to-date: the domain was created before I moved to my current address.

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Comments

Well, after a pair of backs-and-forths with MelbourneIT (12 hours shifted, of course), they've finally removed my name from the whois data and replaced it with:


Domain Name.......... stefy72.com
Creation Date........ 2005-11-03
Registration Date.... 2005-11-03
Expiry Date.......... 2006-11-03
Organisation Name.... Disputed Registration
Organisation Address. P O Box 99800
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. Emeryville
Organisation Address. 94662
Organisation Address. CA
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES

Thanks go to Jan who helped out, although I should note that they really do need a better dispute-resolution mechanism, and abuse@ should be more responsive 24-7. (Didn't Panix go through this a year or so ago with MelbourneIT and their note being around on weekends?)

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