- Joined
- Jul 18, 2002
- Messages
- 1,574
- Reaction score
- 5
Guys,
This is Luc, from EstiBot. I run the service, and I also run Dropping.com, PremiumDrops.com, DomainResearchTool.com, Trademark247.com and a few other services domainers have used over the last decade. I am not a domain name investor, and I do not buy/sell/flip domains. I'm a software engineer.
Since the beginning, we've taken serious steps to ensure our customers data remains confidential. That's because when I began working on EstiBot.com 2.0 about 5 years ago, front-running by registries and registrars was a big deal and domain investors didn't know who to trust. I think everyone remembers when Verisign began to register every single available domain name that was looked up at every registrar, and then try to sell it back to the person who looked it up for 3x the price. A bunch of registrars did this to, and some continue to do it. Front-running by registries and registrars was, and continues to be somewhat of a problem (although Verisign no longer does this).
T0 get around this, I tried to "lock down" as many queries as I could so that your valuations are not exposed to third parties, such as Verisign (for availability checks, etc).
The way we do this is we download all of the major zone files every day, these are files that include a list of every registered domain. We insert them into our local database and that's how we perform availability lookups. We don't query Verisign, or PIR, or any other registry, but instead we query our own database to ensure that the appraisal is not leaked to untrusted third parties. This also means that our availability queries can be delayed by as much as 24 hours, since if the domain was registered within the last 24 hours, it would still show up as "available" in our database due to only being updated once per day. I felt this delay is worth the price of not exposing our customers queries. The same is done with the Afternic sales inventory. We download it once per day, and insert into our local database so that we do not query Afternic, exposing our customers lookups, instead we query our own database which has the Afternic sales inventory.
Now, regarding EstiBot registering domains. EstiBot is a software company. As a company policy, my staff, and I are prohibited from registering domain names, flipping domains, investing in domains or anything that may compete with our customers. We take great pride in keeping our nose clean and focusing on software. Software is our passion.
Focus, there are quite a few possibilities here. 1. The domain name was already registered, but our system was showing it as available due to the delay on same day registrations. 2. It's possible that you have some type of an extension (ex: Firefox or Chrome or IE) that monitors domains and performs availability checks or the like. There are a few of these, and while most of them are genuine, the data source they use for checking availability may not be. 3. The registrar was front-running. The domain is not used and it appears to be for sale. I doubt this is the case however.
I think that most of all front-running today is the result of data gathered by browser extensions, such as Firefox extensions, IE extensions and Chrome extensions, that use an untrusted source to pull data from (ex: untrusted availability source). This doesn't include just domain related extensions. There are many companies out there that sell customer lookups generated by their extensions. If you have Windows, get a freeware program called smartsniff and it will show you all internet packets sent/received while you're using the internet. If there is a rouge extension or application, you should be able to spot it pretty quickly (though you may have to perform some lookups).
Sorry for the delay in response. I was just made aware of this thread.
-Luc
This is Luc, from EstiBot. I run the service, and I also run Dropping.com, PremiumDrops.com, DomainResearchTool.com, Trademark247.com and a few other services domainers have used over the last decade. I am not a domain name investor, and I do not buy/sell/flip domains. I'm a software engineer.
Since the beginning, we've taken serious steps to ensure our customers data remains confidential. That's because when I began working on EstiBot.com 2.0 about 5 years ago, front-running by registries and registrars was a big deal and domain investors didn't know who to trust. I think everyone remembers when Verisign began to register every single available domain name that was looked up at every registrar, and then try to sell it back to the person who looked it up for 3x the price. A bunch of registrars did this to, and some continue to do it. Front-running by registries and registrars was, and continues to be somewhat of a problem (although Verisign no longer does this).
T0 get around this, I tried to "lock down" as many queries as I could so that your valuations are not exposed to third parties, such as Verisign (for availability checks, etc).
The way we do this is we download all of the major zone files every day, these are files that include a list of every registered domain. We insert them into our local database and that's how we perform availability lookups. We don't query Verisign, or PIR, or any other registry, but instead we query our own database to ensure that the appraisal is not leaked to untrusted third parties. This also means that our availability queries can be delayed by as much as 24 hours, since if the domain was registered within the last 24 hours, it would still show up as "available" in our database due to only being updated once per day. I felt this delay is worth the price of not exposing our customers queries. The same is done with the Afternic sales inventory. We download it once per day, and insert into our local database so that we do not query Afternic, exposing our customers lookups, instead we query our own database which has the Afternic sales inventory.
Now, regarding EstiBot registering domains. EstiBot is a software company. As a company policy, my staff, and I are prohibited from registering domain names, flipping domains, investing in domains or anything that may compete with our customers. We take great pride in keeping our nose clean and focusing on software. Software is our passion.
Focus, there are quite a few possibilities here. 1. The domain name was already registered, but our system was showing it as available due to the delay on same day registrations. 2. It's possible that you have some type of an extension (ex: Firefox or Chrome or IE) that monitors domains and performs availability checks or the like. There are a few of these, and while most of them are genuine, the data source they use for checking availability may not be. 3. The registrar was front-running. The domain is not used and it appears to be for sale. I doubt this is the case however.
I think that most of all front-running today is the result of data gathered by browser extensions, such as Firefox extensions, IE extensions and Chrome extensions, that use an untrusted source to pull data from (ex: untrusted availability source). This doesn't include just domain related extensions. There are many companies out there that sell customer lookups generated by their extensions. If you have Windows, get a freeware program called smartsniff and it will show you all internet packets sent/received while you're using the internet. If there is a rouge extension or application, you should be able to spot it pretty quickly (though you may have to perform some lookups).
Sorry for the delay in response. I was just made aware of this thread.
-Luc
