Reglikedomain industry desk

CIT Bank’s CEO “Sucks Ass” as stated by domain name registrations

Over a dozen negative domain names regarding Ellen Alemany registered at MarkMonitor.

CIT Bank, or someone affiliated with its CEO Ellen Alemany, has just gone on a defensive domain name registration binge.

Using brand protection domain name service MarkMonitor, the registrant picked up over a dozen negative .com domain names regarding Alemany, plus the .net and .org equivalents for some of them.

Among the domains registered are EllenAlemany-Sucks-Ass.com, FireEllenAlemany.com, and [email protected].

Seriously.

Now, I understand the desire to register domain names defensively. But registering a name like iHateEllenAlemany.ORG shows the futility of this exercise. There are hundreds of domain extensions and variations on this theme that someone can register if they truly hate Ellen Alemany. For example, EllenAlemany.sucks is still available.

The only people who win from these registrations are .com registry Verisign and brand protection registrar MarkMonitor.

Alemany serves on a number of boards, so it’s possible that a firm other than CIT is behind the registrations.

This isn’t the first person to attempt to lock up negative domains. Bank of America did the same thing for many of its executives and board members back in 2010.

Here are the .com domains registered yesterday:

  • boycott-ellenalemany.com
  • boycottellenalemany.com
  • dontbuyellenalemany.com
  • ellenalemany-blows.com
  • ellenalemany-stinks.com
  • ellenalemany-suck-ass.com
  • ellenalemany-sucks.com
  • ellenalemany-sux.com
  • ellenalemanyblows.com
  • ellenalemanystinks.com
  • ellenalemanysucks.com
  • ellenalemanysucksass.com
  • ellenalemanysux.com
  • fireellenalemany.com
  • [email protected]
  • [email protected]
  • ihate-ellenalemany.com
  • ihateellenalemany.com

Also on the wire

Other reporting from the domain desk.