Tell HN: Namecheap pre-purchasing searched domain names?

I thought that was known. I never check if a domain is available in any registrar. If I come up with a fancy name, I usually check the following: check if handles are available in common places (it could be twitter, linkedin, whatever matters for you) and when I’m sure i want the domain, i buy it. No checking beforehand.

Having worked at a registrar, these claims always seem suspicious and highly unlikely to me for one good reason: big registrars get thousands (lowballing it) of domain checks every day. There is no way they would buy all the searched domains just to annoy you, it just would not be profitable. I’m also pretty sure front running is an explicit breach of the registry-registrar/ICANN agreements for all TLDs (maybe not for some exotic ccTLDs?) which could cost them their accreditation, sooo… not worth it.

What COULD happen is an insider getting access to the list of looked up domains and selling it or squatting some domains themselves. That would obviously be a reason for termination + legal charges. If I remember well, Namecheap claims they don’t keep a log of the searched domains, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible for an engineer to intercept it via a backdoor or via internal blind spots (the searched domains could be logged somewhere for some reason).

It has happened to me previously also using BOTH namecheap/godaddy, back then I just shrugged it off, but this time it really pissed me off...

So I guess the best bet is to check for domains on the ACTUAL ENTITY PROVIDER who provides domain names to resellers, such as:

https://www.verisign.com/en_US/domain-names/domain-name-sear...

Plus their brainstorming feature is one of the best out there IMO.

I can confirm. Either that or they are selling the search history. In my case it ended up in some broker that tried to sell it for $2.000 but after a couple years it become available at some Chinese broker for only $10.

I use Namecheap to search too and have searched hundreds of domains, and this has never happened to me. So I think it's not a script.

Apparently it's a problem others have. I saw a complaint earlier this week -

https://old.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1kvlcp2/i_looked_up...

By the way, you could have received a letter from OpenAI using this domain, as they don’t like people using their GPT brand without authorisation.

I always thought this was the work of domain squatters who run software to see what names are being queried, then they purchase and sit on them. I first heard about this back in 05' , then never heard about it again.

Did NameCheap merely register the domain and are holding onto it, or are they now selling it at a higher price than typical registration (usually ~$12/year for a .com) through their platform?

Namecheap CEO denies they are responsible, offering $50k to anyone who can prove they are behind it:

> This is false, we do not monitor customer searches nor do we register domains that have been searched on our site. I've said this before and I'll say it again here, if anyone cares to prove that this actually exists and someone within our company is registering searched domain names I will give them a 50k reward on the spot.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35344122#:~:text=Namech...

Yes, you can find stories of this happening here or there.

Install `whois` on your system and use it to query for domain existence instead.

I've been moving over to porkbun. I do not trust namecheap since they cut off a whole country...

yes they do it

happened to me many times

What are some non-scummy registrars these days?

Caveat: I have no idea whether the claims in OP are true.