08JAN08 – It’s a little nightmare senario that borders on paranoia; or does it? When you go to a Domain Name provider to find a name for your website, what if someone’s watching and if you don’t buy the name, someone else mysteriously does. The practice is called Domain Name Front Running the URL or and it’s a dirty business. Network Solutions has recently been accused of such activity. But maybe you already suspected it?

Stealing domain names can be lucrative. Long before most of us heard of the Internet, a group of tech-savvy farmers (huh?) bought up names like coca-cola.com and kleenex.com and sold them back to the respective companies for millions. Farmers no more; the judges upheld the legality of the shrewd move. But this move required no spying, just some guts and brains. In responce to the accusations leveled against Network Solutions, they issued a statement today swearing to defend Domain Name Searches:

After the search ends, we will put the domain name on reserve. During this reservation period, the name is not active and we do not monetize the traffic on these domains. If a customer searches for the domain again during the next 4 days at networksolutions.com, the domain will be available to register. If the domain name is not purchased within 4 days, it will be released back to the registry and will be generally available for registration.

In a valid defense that casts a shadow of doubt on Network Solution’s guilt, they offer up the admission that money is made by search engines for selling off queries. In these queries can be found the same Domain Tasting that is done at Network Solutions. Domain Tasting is the process of checking the availability of a website name.