How to find out if a name has been hijacked?

[Bob]

I am looking at some valuable names. I am a little curious if they have any "bad karma" associated with them. Any ideas on how I could find out any information if they are hijacked or stolen?

Thanks!

-Bob

 

[draqon]

well, if they are at DotRegistrar, there is a good chance that the most recent thief hijacked them. He moved all of his loot over to that registrar. Other than that, its pretty hard.

 

[DnPowerful]

Actually, it's an outrage that an advisory list isn't circulating amongst registrars and that any name that is the source of conflict (stolen or before ICANN) doesn't have a note attached to its whois.

It's bad enough that NSI never makes public names that have been stolen...

 

[Brujah]

Bob, were you contacted by a seller ? Are all the domains in one persons name ?

 

[GeorgeK]

Bob: you can use tools like Alexa and www.archive.org to see if the domain has changed hands recently. There's no "perfect" way to trace a domain name's history, like there would be for real estate. That's one thing I'd like to see one or more of the registrars do, i.e. have a public "audit trail". It would improve the security of the entire system, to have that transparency.