Rafael Sosa’s Weblog

Following on the Network Solutions story about domain stealing or “front running“, I’d like to share a recent story of my own. I am currently learning to speak Russian, so I decided to check out a few Russian IDNs under the .com extension for availability. I found one which I was amazed to learn that was available: невест.com (google translation: Brides.com)

I began the process to register it at GoDaddy, but decided to come back to it later after I had asked a Russian friend of mine if it was the correct and most popular translation for “brides”. Today, I went back to check the availability and невест.com was registered on December 27th, 2007 to a person who’s name doesn’t appear even once under a Google search. I called the listed phone and it is “Temporarily Disconnected”.

Coincidentally, the address listed for the domain registration is 26 minutes from GoDaddy’s headquarters.

It was best not to register the name, because as my Russian friend clarified, the correct translation is невеста, ending “a” and невесты is the plural form. Both of the correct translations were registered a few years ago.