DNS Squatting

  • ahealthierhappy · Member ·

    Hi everyone,
    My blog site started out as ahealthierhappy.wordpress.com. Through WordPress, I paid for the domain ahealthierhappy.com for two years. I wasn’t blogging and made the mistake of letting it expire. I changed my mind and went back to see if I could still get it, and saw that it was for sale on one of those domain sale sites. The price was too high, so I figured I’d just let it go. My blog site reverted back to ahealthierhappy.wordpress.com and is still up and under my control.

    Yesterday it came to my attention that ahealthierhappy.com was bought by someone and is a live site again. It’s been rebuilt slightly differently, but all of my previous content is there – all my posts, my graphics, my photos, heck even the About page still has all of my info. Several new posts have been posted that are not mine.

    I reached out via the email address that’s listed in Contact, telling this person to remove all of my content immediately. He or she responded telling me it’s theirs now and I can buy it back. Of course, I am in no way doing so. I spoke to a friend who’s in the InfoSec world, and he said this is called DNS squatting.

    Has anyone experienced this? Is there anything I can do? It sounds like I’m especially screwed if this squatter is in another country. I haven’t responded to this person yet, as I wanted to get some more info about the situation.

    Thanks!

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    As that site is not hosted on our servers, there is nothing that we can do.

    Someone buying a domain you used to own definitely does not also give them a right to use content you used to have hosted at that domain, in any country.

    Please reach out to their hosting and/or domain provider to find out their process for requesting a takedown of copyrighted content or personal information posted without your consent.

    It looks like that domain is now registered with Namecheap.com, and their DNS is hosted by Cloudflare.com.

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