Time to vent (TSW stolen)

[Comey]

Rain, I appreciate the help. But you might want to rest, before you fry my brain with your reading. ; )

Knowing NameCheap is good. I don't know if Cooley is aware of that. I'll send that his way.

We'll have our lawyer (ie our Atlanta Braves owner in the eMLB) contact them and rattle some cages.

[RainMaker]

ICANN is also a place you'd want to send your complaints to. All registrars like NameCheap need to be accredited by ICANN. Sending in complaints can hurt that status and force them to either be investigated or have their accredited status removed. Unlikely to happen, but if they have received other complaints about harboring domain thieves, you never know.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by Izulde

FBI doesn't care unless it's linked to terrorism in some way.

The greatest TV show of all time taught us that!

Sam Malone was a secret FBI agent? I must have missed that episode

SI

[Comey]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

ICANN is also a place you'd want to send your complaints to. All registrars like NameCheap need to be accredited by ICANN. Sending in complaints can hurt that status and force them to either be investigated or have their accredited status removed. Unlikely to happen, but if they have received other complaints about harboring domain thieves, you never know.

I fired off complaints to both places. And I'm going to get others to do it too.

[stevew]

Its a sporting goods site now?

Total sports world dot com?

[stevew]

Nevermind

[Comey]

Well, I wrote something up. Hopefully some of you will help us. We are all in the same community. Hopefully what we could show, in numbers, will help us get back what is ours.

(I posted this on our backup site.)

---

Hello,

If you're as pissed off as I am that someone has taken our home from us, go to this link:

http://reports.internic.net/cgi/regi...lem-report.cgi

Write up a complaint. Copy and paste this if you wish:

Hello,

I am writing to complain about NameCheap Inc., who is harboring a domain thief. Someone stole five domains from our administrator (the biggest of which are www.totalsportsworld.net and www.gridiron-glory.net) and have used them to distribute hardcore pornography.

The person who took our websites decided to call our administrator and gloat about his "acquisition", adding that there was nothing we could do about it.

We are not a for-profit group, and therefore, we do not have the resources available to fight this legally. We are simply a sports gaming website. Nothing in "Total Sports World" screams porn.

Hopefully you can assist us, and return to us what is rightfully ours. It is unjust that someone with a little technical know-how can outright take someone's online community with no recourse.

We hope that it stops here, and that justice prevails.

Thank you for reading, and we look forward to any and all assistance you provide.

Sincerely,

(Insert Your Name)

----

In order to make this work, we need numbers. Enlist everyone you can. It will take very little on your part to help our cause. It will take very little on anyone's part to help our cause.

Please, help us fight for the community we all love so much.

Thanks,
John

[RainMaker]

I've gotten word back from both the owner of the site that it's being redirected to and the host (who is a highly respected, honest guy in the hosting industry) that the person who hijacked the domain is not the same person as the one it's being redirected to.

It could be someone trying to scam the site in a traffic trade. I'll ask if they can check that.

Otherwise, do you guys have any enemies at all who may be able to figure out the password? It could be as simple as an old e-mail address that someone could gain access to for password reminders. A competitor's site that you used the same password on.

I bring that up because the guy calling you is odd. If it's a true domain hijacking for traffic, they wouldn't call you. They wouldn't draw attention to what they did. It happens a lot and they'd rather fly well under the radar. It's also not a highly trafficked site or one of major internet prestige. That's what makes me think it's personal.

[Antmeister]

Ummmmm.....what the hell!?!?!?!

[RainMaker]

Just a suggestion, but I would contact NameCheap directly before bombarding them with e-mails. See what they say over the phone and if they can help.

I'll ask my business partner in the morning if he has any good contacts at NameCheap. He's pretty into domaining so he knows a lot of guys in that industry.

[Comey]

I wrote NameCheap directly. I informed them that I had contacted ICANN as well. (I also wrote CNet because, well, this is a social issue with gray areas. And I've seen them help in these kind of situations before.)

But this new information is, well...interesting, to say the least. And there's only one person I can think of with this.

We get more traffic than most think...but we are, for all intents and purposes, a niche community. So...this is rather eye-raising.

I am off to bed for this evening...but will be checking this out in the morning, and tomorrow afternoon.

If I get any information, I will update you all. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your help and support.

Thanks,
John

[Passacaglia]

That sucks. Someone didn't get the team they wanted in Gridiron Glory?

[stevew]

If those are porno links at the moment, you probably want to hxxp them just in case.

[Comey]

NameCheap has locked the sites in question, saying that GoDaddy is supposed to do something (FOA, form of authorization) in this case.

That is all well and good...but GoDaddy has already claimed that there is nothing they can do. That may put us between a rock and a hard place, until we can get something that gets us some more information on our hacker (ie an injuction or some kind of claim that nets us his IP, or name, etc).

[Comey]

If you are a TSW member, you can access the forums by going to this link:

Total Sports World Forums - Powered by vBulletin

We're working on ways around this mess...but it's going to take awhile.