[sf-lug] More on the whois data from March (and domain lifecycle, and ...)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Michael Paoli (Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu):

> Actually, I believe when I peeked earlier, that was the original
> renewal which I believe was charged to Jim's card.  It was shortly
> after that that most all the whois data changed - I'm presuming the
> renewal was reversed or contested, Jim got his charge back, and
> Network Solutions reasonably so, the domain at/past the expiration
> date then, took it over as theirs.

Sounds plausible.

Since whois data is not historical (as presented at the public whois
servers), and the latest third-party snapshot I've seen is late March, I 
have no knowledge of the details of this.

Renewing a domain via credit card and then contesting the charges can be
pretty reliably predicted to have adverse effects of the 'Nice domain
you have there; shame if something happened to it' variety.

Don't do that.  Or, at _least_, renew the domain, move it to a different
registrar, make sure the move has completed, and only _then_ contest the
charges.

Because otherwise, the company you don't like is in an excellent
position to spike your domain.  Obvious, no?


> Well, looks dang close to 75 days ...
> $ TZ=GMT0 date -d 'Dec 03 18:52:28 GMT 2015 + 75 days'
> Tue Feb 16 18:52:28 GMT 2016
> $ That's a domain that was expiring, and I snatched it up within a few
> hours of it becoming up for grabs available to the public from any
> registrar - so, ... I got it 77 and some fraction days after it expired
> ... wee bit under 78 days, and I snagged it within a few hours of it
> becoming available (at least per the whois data, which at that point I
> was checking every 15 (or 10?) minutes.  That was a .org TLD that the
> prior registrar was GoDaddy.

Yeah, I've seen that sort of thing, too.  It's _supposed_ to be exactly
75 days according to write-ups I've seen, but then when an actual domain 
(svlug.net) got dropped because I was too busy with my own problems and
nobody else at SVLUG was paying attention at all, the 'drop' occurred
at, IIRC, a day or so after the predicted date, and Joe Grosch snatched
it up for SVLUG's benefit, from the public pool.

> Also highly recommended reading (I especially recommend it for
> electrical/electronic/computer programmers/engineers, sys admins, those
> that manage them, and engineers/technical folks in general, and also
> anyone who's interested and/or cares):
> _Computer-Related Risks_ - Peter G. Neumann
> http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/neumann-book.html

Neumann is also the long-time moderator of the RISKS Digest, which I've
been following for many years and have been published in.

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/