YH.com Domain Name Stolen: Warning
Valuable two letter domain name YH.com has been stolen.
The domain name YH.com has been hijacked from its owner and the thief is trying to sell it.
The domain’s owner is Jaynell Hogan, who was properly identified in the whois database until March 26, when the domain name was suddenly transferred from Go Daddy to DOMENESHOP AS. The whois record changed to “Domain Administrator”. The thief then created a Gmail address using Hogan’s name, which is right now listed as the administrative contact.
T.M. Camp, Web Strategist for Hogan’s firm Gazillion & One, explained what happened in an interview with Reglike.
“Early the prior week I started to get some notifications from our hosting provider Dreamhost and from Go Daddy that someone was attempted to transfer a couple of our domains, one of which was gazillion1.com,” explained Camp. He stated he replied to the emails stating not to transfer the domains.
Camp explained that the firm uses Gmail (Google Apps) for its email. Later in the week Camp realized that someone had compromised the Gmail accounts. They changed the administrative passwords, which locked them out of their accounts. They also got access to the firm’s hosting accounts.
YH.com wasn’t connected to any of that hosting. But with access to the corporate accounts, the thief was then able to access the account connected with YH.com. From there, transferring the domain was simple.
Firms with valuable domain names ought to consider extra locking and security services offered by domain name registrars. Go Daddy offers such a service, and VeriSign now offers “registry lock” service that can also add protection.
Remember, if someone approaches you regarding buying a domain name quickly at a discount price, be wary. Especially if it’s a two or three letter domain name. If you see any forum postings offering YH.com for sale, please comment with the information.
