I don’t like being watched. While it’s classic paranoid behaviour to think you are being watched, recent evidence has led me to think that I am, in some capacity. In bleak future world scenarios, the Big Brother scenes typically come up. Those with the means finding ways to track and watch us all, keeping tabs, keeping control… As technology advances, I like to keep an eye on who wields it most. I’m cautious, what can I say? I embrace technology, but I do fear it. Technological leaps are leaps worth making - carefully. So… what happened?
I spoke to a friend of mine recently, who told me that she had found a “siamese mushroom”. I thought that sounded kinda nifty. “Siamese mushroom.” I like to build web sites. After some good cognitive wiring, a radar now goes off in my head whenever I hear a domain-nameable phrase or expression. Siamese mushroom set off that alarm. I checked Moniker when I got home, and it was available. Hooray! I figured I’d wait a little bit and decide whether or not to buy. As with anything else, impulse is not a good reason to spend money.
Today is about a week later. I’m at work. While thinking about domain names, siamesemushroom.com popped into my head again. I realized that I liked it, and didn’t want to forget it, so I sent myself a Gmail, as I often do, for note-taking purposes. Subject heading: Domain Name Idea. Body: www.siamesemushroom.com. Maybe I’ll buy it when I get home, I thought.
I messaged my wife using MSN Messenger, asking her what she thought. She agreed that it sounded kinda funky, giving me the greenish light to go buy. Then, a couple of minutes later, she messaged me again:
“It’s a fake site. Link list.”
I checked the URL, and saw what’s there now. One of those waste of webspace piece of junk linkfarms, the scourge of any genuine domain name collector (for the record, I don’t have very many – I just appreciate, enjoy, and use them). How strange, I thought. I checked the whois info, and voilà! Bought today.
Today! Never mind the odds of searching whois info on the day a domain name is bought, but a day when I e-mailed the exact URL to myself? Memories of “Google’s getting creepy” articles flood back into consciousness. Don’t worry about the ads that pull keywords from your e-mail, they say. No one’s reading them, they say. I’m familiar enough with Google’s ad tools to know that it makes sense, but clearly this isn’t normal. I know this isn’t exactly a major incident, but it’s most certainly noteworthy.
What am I missing? Is there a hole somewhere? I’ve never searched the .com itself in Google, to avoid clicking on someone’s site and my search ending up appearing in their tracking info, just in case. Either something’s up with Moniker, MSN messenger, or Gmail (or my wife e-mailed her secret contact in the Caribbean, who bought it before I could). If this is somehow my fault, I’d like to know, and so should everyone else who operates at all like I do. I’m not suggesting that a domain name coincidence is evidence of the technologically dominant group tracking us in order to take us over and rule the planet, but I find the circumstances most certainly steps in the wrong direction. At a minimum, it’s a relevant, practical nuisance. Any thoughts? Other than that I should stop blogging and get back to work.
yeah - this does seem really weird. but maybe it’s just a heckuva coincidence?
i think you’d have to dig up significant numbers of other people who’ve had this happen to them for it to be meaningful.
Most likely is that one of your MS tools is trojaned or Moniker purchased the domain.
While I do believe in synchronicity, the human capacity for dismissing what we notice as coincidence amazes me. Neither email nor messages sent online are private and gmail is probably more prone to being data mined than most.
Since I do online advertising for a wide range of products I use some very unique words. I’ve noticed SPAM targeting names and words I’ve recently emailed especially if I use Yahoo Messenger. Figuring out how and where data id compromised online is challenging.
The main thing we all must remember is what we do online is NOT private and many ARE collecting it and building profiles on us. We must learn to be ourselves and refuse to be hypocrites who judge others while hoping our own “skeletons” stay tucked into a closet.
And we must stop allowing others to control us with fear: fear of shame, fear of bad credit, fear of not conforming - you name it, there is a fear for it. Acknowledge the fear and move through it.
Call the phone number listed in the whois and ask for an explanation…
This happens all the time. When you do a whois and don’t buy straight away the registrar buys the domain in the hope you will buy it from them. If you don’t buy it from them they will let it drop in a couple of weeks.
http://www.dailydomainer.com/200775-domain-tasting-monitoring-searches.html
or maybe someone at moniker monitors whois queries for good domains… Wouldn’t be the first time!
It’s not gmail that’s the problem, it’s the registrar stealing your ideas for themselves, as mentioned above. This has been known for a long time. If you’re checking domain names, it’s best to simply type it in the URL bar, if it doesn’t resolve 9 times out of 10 it’s a free URL (the 1 time it’s just a server down or a reserved URL).
Pretty interesting, but you have no real data to back up your paranoia. But it’s something worth perusing! Try the same process again, with equally meaningful names, even if silly. It would be very interesting to see whether you get beaten to them again. I’m going to try this right now…
People actually have access to websites you search for availability on. Happens all the time. Has happened to me plenty of times.
I’m always wary of doing a domain search without buying the available domain there-and-then. I’ve done this before, searched for a domain, found it available, then about a week later it’s been purchased. Probably nothing to do with Google…
The biggest problem with online services is the security of your personal data. Who has access to it? Well… all the developers for sure. Management, of course. These types routinely bypass privacy agreements out of necessity. As a developer myself, I often need access to the DB. As a blogger, you also have access to the DB (as does anyone you have trusted with the info).
Alot of development happens worldwide. It’s not uncommon to have a new Web 2.0 site with developers in India, China, The US all working together, for example. Each of these developers are tied to larger development companies… each company is tied together via a network (lan) with access by many different people within the organization and so on…
It also doesn’t take much server code to capture tons of user data by simply visiting a page… the link below is probably the best site that shows just how much data can be collected by simply visiting a page (including the contents of your clipboard):
http://gemal.dk/browserspy/
It gets worse if using Internet Explorer with ActiveX running - since you could potentially give sites access to your machine.
In the end, it’s a matter of trust. I trust that Google will not make my emails available. Remember… this was the only online giant that fought the US Government in regard to providing search data. It’s also the only company that has pledged a ‘do no evil’ because they understand what’s at stake. All the others, including Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo quickly betrayed this trust when it came to user privacy rights as did AT&T (phones) and Sony (rootkits) and many others.
When I’m interested in a domain after typing a whois on goDaddy (and others) - I quickly purchase it because the level of trust I have for these domain companies are much lower.
Patrick Altoft is right. If you do a whois for a domain and it doesn’t exist, you can expect someone to buy it rather quickly. they figure if one person is looking for it, there may be more. Either you’ll a) try to buy it from them or b) there will be enough traffic to that domain to make _some_ amount of money from ads. that’s how the domain biz works. Don’t worry. Nobody cares about your gmail.
Next time write it on a Post-It, stick it in your wallet and open it when you get home. Send yourself an email reminding you that you have an important idea in your wallet, so you don’t forget it.
Now, if in your way home you get robbed and some thugs steal your wallet, then maybe you might start worrying
I believe the culprit may be Monker.com. They might be dipping into the controversial world of “Domain Tasting”. See this article: http://www.dailydomainer.com/200775-domain-tasting-monitoring-searches.html
when you check with moniker and others, to see if a webname is taken, they immediately flag it and squatters buy it and hold it hoping to sell it for a outrageous sum of money. it was not gmail, seriously.
You should start sending fake domain ideas to yourself, like googleisgod.com and bushisarestard.org or you could try something that is obviously junk and see if it’s a coincedence or not.
Yup, Domain kiting I’m afraid. I’ve also heard (but not sure if it’s true) that every time the WHOIS check gets run, on whatever site, it pings a whole load of the other registrars to check if the domain is available with them, incase it’s been recently registered. The tricksters then get a lovely list of the searches people are making and what they could pursue.
I never do a domain search unless I intend to buy it. I would find it more likely that moniker.com logs searches, and somebody with access to the logs buys those domains rather than someone snooping your gmail acount.
Same happened to me - I agree with Patrick - it’s the WHOIS searches that are compromised. All 3 of the WHOIS domains I searched for where snatched up that day (3 separate instances)
As Patrick said, registrars often buy domain names that are queried with whois, but there are also tools out there for average users to search whois queries. Again, this happens all the time and you have no need to worry about your email or messaging security. Rather than using whois, try just typing the domain first. If you get a “Server not found” error page, odds are that the domain is not taken. Then you need to decide if you’re really serious about buying it because as soon as you use whois you can be sure it’ll be bought within a day to a week of your search for it.
Don’t trust MSN
I’ve heard of rumors that GoDaddy will register domain names based on searches done by customers (that don’t end up purchasing the domain right away). I don’t know if it is true, but whenever a friend asks me about registering a domain, I recommend doing a lookup through something like www.dnsstuff.com or something like that.
It was most definitely the registrar. If you had waited a couple days they would have dropped it when it didn’t get a lot of hits, and you could have bought it then, but now that your post hit stumbleUpon most likely enough traffic is going to go to the URL to legitimize the purchase, and they will keep it for the year.
This happened to me in a similar way. It has happened twice now with Godaddy, the only difference is that mine happened within 10 to 15 minutes. I looked it up, got excited it was available, went to get a drink, made a phone call. Went to purchase the domain and all of the sudden it was no longer available. WTF.
I heard that this happens all the time, as other people have said. this sucks IMO and I wish there was a way to stop it. Every time I am interested in a domain now, I login to my account first and as soon as I find one is available I add it to my cart. I simply keep my cart active for a while while I really think about the domain, or add more. Then I either forget about it or continue with the purchase. But if its in my cart, I don’t think it will be bought from under me.(?)
Check this out… there is a leak somewhere:
http://www.dailydomainer.com/2007173-who-is-monitoring-your-domain-searches-update.html
Well, I tried this on the 12th and as of today, still no domain pinching going on. The only difference is I don’t use MSN messenger.