DOMAINfest 2008 gets underway today in Hollywood, California. Our own Bill Sweetman, General Manager, Domains, made the trip (and escaped the frigid cold that descended over Toronto this weekend). We’ll be sure to get Bill’s thoughts on the conference when he gets back.

If you are taking in the event yourself, we have one last reminder about a panel discussion that Bill will be participating in. That session, “Branding for Gold, Balancing Hype and Reality,” is happening Tuesday at 11:30 A.M. (PST) in Salon 6. Bill and friends will be sharing their knowledge and experience in the domain industry.

Also of note is the SnapNames Live Auctions taking place this week. SnapNames has made the auction catalog available for download. You can get all the details over at the SnapNames Live site. If you’re planning on participating, you’ll want to get the software installed in your browser and get yourself all set up so you won’t miss out on any buying opportunities. The first half of the two-day auction gets underway at 4:00 P.M. PST on Tuesday, January 22.

Back in December we told you that the replacement for our Email Defense service was in QA, and that we were planning to go live with the new service in January. True to our word, I’m happy to report that the newly minted offering we’re calling “Tucows Email Filtering” will be live the week of January 29th.

We have a lot to share with you in the coming weeks, and Email Filtering is just one part. I’ll follow up this post soon with a full explanation of how it works, including the thinking behind some of the changes that we’ve made. You’ll quickly understand why we’re calling this “new” once you see it in action.

DOMAINfest 2008 kicks off one week from today in Hollywood, California. For the uninitiated, there are a couple of major domain-related conferences each year – DOMAINfest being one of them, and T.R.A.F.F.I.C. being the other.

DOMAINfest bills itself as “a global event built to bring together the largest audience of domainers in a central location for an intense three days of learning, networking, and fun. Great domain industry minds will come together to share knowledge and build new ideas and explore new avenues to keep our progress going. Look forward to big speakers, big topics, and big fun!”

One of those ‘domain industry minds’ is Tucows’ own Bill Sweetman, General Manager, Domains Portfolio. Bill will be attending DOMAINfest, and will be a part of a panel discussion titled, “Branding for Gold, Balancing Hype and Reality.” Joining Bill will be David Sams, Mike “Zappy” Zapolin, and Andy Miller. That panel discussion will be held on January 22nd at 11:30pm PST for those planning to attend.

Bill tells me that he’s looking forward to a pair of SnapNames Live Auctions taking place on January 22nd and 23rd. For those who haven’t seen or heard a live domain name auction before, Adam Eisner, Product Manager, Domains, Tucows sat down with Joey deVilla last summer and recounted his experiences at T.R.A.F.F.I.C including the live auction held there. Here’s a link to that interview in MP3 format.

Bill has a good deal of enthusiasm about domains and the domain industry and I’m confident that we’ll see a report or two from him both from DOMAINfest and from the upcoming T.R.A.F.F.I.C. show in February.

Some useful links:

• DOMAINfest website
• SnapNames Auction website
• T.R.A.F.F.I.C. website

As¬†James mentioned in yesterday’s post¬†here on the Tucows Blog,¬†Network Solutions Inc.¬†caused quite a furor¬†when they confirmed that they are “front running”¬†(registering domains based on domain searches done by potential registrants).

After a contributor to Domain State broke the story, it was covered on Techmeme, Digg, Slashdot, and a host of individual sites and blogs, etc. and so on. Heck, it even made USA Today.

To be clear, Network Solutions officially denied they were front running:

Although Network Solutions does temporarily register a site a customer searched for, spokeswoman Susan Wade denied there’s anything nefarious afoot. “Network Solutions is not front-running,” she said. Network Solutions holds the domain for up to four days, during which time a customer can register it only from Network Solutions and after which it again becomes generally available if unregistered, Wade said. But that feature, she said, is a “pre-emptive” measure to protect customers–from front-runners. That’s because front-runners can tell when a customer has searched for a domain at Network Solutions, for example because Network Solutions then must check availability at other sites when a customer searches, Wade said.

Respectfully, this is spin. As many of those up in arms about this have pointed out, Network Solutions is effectively saying “we’re pre-emptively front running to help prevent others from front running”. ¬†My guess is most people would say “thanks but no thanks”. I’m concerned however about an aspect of Susan Wade’s statement that others haven’t made much of, namely that registries are involved in Front Running.

“This search data is captured at the various registries. We believe there are registries and/or Internet service providers that may be selling this data to front-runners. So, by holding domains searched on Network Solutions, this pre-empts the search data being captured,” she said.

If Network Solutions has evidence of registries  - or any service provider for that matter Рactually being involved in front running, I urge them to share this information with the Internet community so that we can all make sure that these people are called out for the practice and our customers can be told to avoid them in the future.

In light of some very recent events in the domain name market, we thought now would be a great time to again call attention to why taking your time, and doing your research when choosing your Registrar is so important. The advice applies both to Resellers and to Registrants as the impact of making the wrong choice can, and will, be felt by both.

The “recent events” I’m referring to is the practice Network Solutions was found to be engaging in whereby they would immediately purchase available .com domains that were searched for at their website. While this practice is commonly referred to as front running, Network Solutions has since responded, and have said they instituted this practice as a way to protect potential Registrants against front running by ensuring that the domains they searched for remained available for purchase. We’re willing to give Network Solutions the benefit of the doubt in this case.

Tucows applauds any attempts to protect Registrants from the less scrupulous members of the Internet community.

While Network Solutions registers names searched for at their website, and parks the domain with a holding page, it should be noted they do not attempt to monetize with PPC ads, or otherwise prevent the purchase of the domain in question. However, at this point, potential Registrants are effectively forced to purchase the domain from Network Solutions for a period of four days at which point the domain is dropped.

Read more about it here, and here, if you wish.

I spoke with Adam Eisner, our Product Manager for Domains and he reiterated the underlying values we hold at Tucows.

We work to uphold the rights of Registrants. That means, for example, not putting 60-day locks on domains when a Registrant makes a change to their WHOIS information effectively locking some into a renewal and blocking domain name transfers to other Registrars. That also means having a clear, defined policy surrounding expiry and redemption periods. You can read ours here.

Specifically on the subject of domain tasting, Adam stated that Tucows works to prevent domain name tasting by charging our Resellers a monetary fee on domain name registrations that are cancelled within the five-day Add Grace Period (AGP).

In addition, Tucows does not engage in front-running. Adam is clear on this point: Tucows doesn’t use WHOIS query data or search data from our API to front-run domain names. You can trust our WHOIS and domains lookup search boxes.

But following the rules is just part of what we’re doing to make the Internet better. Tucows has, and continues to work to shape Internet policy with the rights of resellers and domain name registrants in mind. We’ve long been active at ICANN and we’re continue to work to shape domain name policy with the expressed goal of making the Internet better for its users. Next month we’re off to New Delhi, India, for the 31st International Public ICANN meeting.

Ross Rader, our resident policy guy (officially the General Manager of Retail Services) has worked tirelessly in the areas of WHOIS Privacy reform, to name but one example. Elliot Noss, our President and CEO, was one of the people at the forefront of the fight against Registry price increases last year.

Last May, Elliot wrote an extensive article for this blog titled “Questions to Ask Before You Pick Your Domain Name Registrar.” We reference that post regularly as it provides a wealth of information that Registrants can use to educate themselves about how to evaluate potential Registrars before they make a domain name purchase.

Thanks to Flickr user Joe Nangle for the photo and for releasing it under Creative Commons.

When it comes to choosing a domain name for your business, it helps to have a ‘dirty’ mind. Otherwise you might end up being stuck with a domain name that will get you into trouble with word-based content filters.

That’s right, if your domain name inadvertently contains a ‘naughty’ keyword or phrase, your entire Website may be blocked by content blocking filters still commonly used by large corporations, libraries, schools, and overprotective parents. Your site might also be hindered from showing up in some search engines, and some of the email messages you send from your domain could end up being blocked by spam filters.

Here are some fictitious examples of what at first appear to be innocent domain names:

• HireThisExCopper [dot-something]
• EssexWorld [dot-something]

Look closer, however, and you will notice that the first domain contains the word “sex” and the second contains the phrase “sex world.” Both of these domains could end up running into trouble with filters, especially the second one.

And can you spot what’s problematic with these domain names?

• ScanAlley [dot-something]
• CanalTours [dot-something]

Both contain the word “anal” which also poses a risk of running afoul of filters.

You get the idea…

So before deciding on your next domain name, be sure to scrutinize it carefully. Look for any and all ‘troublesome’ words and phrases. The last thing you want is to have your seemingly innocuous domain name misinterpreted by word-based content filters.

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about how to protect your domain names from theft, I’ll point you to a blog post by Bill Sweetman, our General Manager, Domains Portfolio, over at the Canadian Marketing Association’s blog. In that post Bill suggests a domain name related New Year’s Resolution.

I’ll add to Bill’s comments and suggest that while you’re running a WHOIS query on your domains, you should see if you have WHOIS Privacy enabled. If not, enable it and then set those renewal reminders as Bill suggests.

Over Christmas there was a well-publicized case of domain-hijacking that gained some worldwide media attention when David Airey had his domain, www.davidairey.com, stolen. The story was a familiar one ‚Äì a domain thief gained access to a domain holder’s email account (in this case, a Google GMail account) and then used that account to gain control of the domain name and transfer it to himself.

This story had a happy ending and the domain was returned to its rightful owner thanks to, in this case, Go Daddy, which was the receiving Registrar in the fraudulent transfer.

At Tucows we’re actively engaged in the battle against online fraud including domain name theft, phishing, and spam. When domain name thefts are reported to us, our Compliance Team acts accordingly to assist with retrieval of domains where possible.

I talked to Paul Karkas our Compliance Manager. There are a couple of tips to avoiding domain name theft he suggested all domain owners and resellers learn:

1. Use WHOIS Privacy. It can protect you to a certain extent from this kind of theft. If the administrative email address that is listed with the domain name under WHOIS is exposed, then a potential domain thief has two pieces of information he needs – the domain name, and the email address used to manage it. The thief can then gain control of the email address, and then use that email address to gain control of the domain by having passwords emailed to himself. WHOIS Privacy offers some protection because it prevents the domain thief from finding out what the administrative email address is for the domain name.

2. If you can avoid it, don’t use free, web-based email addresses for your administrative contact. In this case, a security flaw in GMail allowed the hacker to gain control of the email account of the domain holder. Likewise, having your entire domain portfolio under a single administrative email account is another mistake. Never mind having one domain name stolen, if a thief gains control of your email account, he could steal your entire portfolio of names.

3. Your domain name is worth more to you than you might think. It may only cost you $10 a year to register the domain, but take a moment to imagine what the cost would be if you had to change domain names tomorrow. It could be as easy as reprinting business cards, or as difficult as re-branding your entire company.

4. Chose your Registrar wisely. Look for a Registrar with a solid Compliance team and a good record within the industry. They’ll have policy and procedures in place to protect you against domain name theft, and in the event your domain is taken from you fraudulently, you stand a better chance of getting it back with a solid registrar. Our CEO, Elliot Noss, has talked about this in the past. You can read his “Ten questions to ask before you pick your domain name Registrar” post for more information on how to make an informed choice.

If you do one thing today, make it this: activate WHOIS privacy on your domains. At Tucows, we recognize the value of WHOIS Privacy, and we include it free with every domain name sold.