I registered two domains, racquetresearch.com and e-classics.com, in 1998, through Network Solutions. Years went by, and I kept them up by an annual charge on my credit card. Somehow, without my knowledge or consent, both sites wound up purportedly owned by ENOM. On visiting these two sites on April 20, 2011 I saw that everything looked OK and the content was still up. Then two days later I went back and the content on both sites had been deleted and replaced with spam. All links and bookmarks redirected to the spam. So it looked like I had become a spammer and that I, the copyright owner and author of the content, had done the deleting.
It wasn't just random spam, like you might expect from a hacker, but spam relevant to the content of the sites, which had both developed into high page rank sites over the years. On e-classics, which was about ancient Greek literature, the spam was for travel to Greece. On racquetresearch.com, an investigation and ranking site for tennis racquets, the spam was for the sale of tennis equipment.
On racquetresearch was (and still is) a domain for sale sign, with some outfit I had never authorized or even heard of (strategicdomains.com) listed as the contact for the sale. I checked whois and my name did not appear on either of the sites. Instead, ENOM, Inc. was the purported owner of both and both were locked. I discovered that there was an unpaid charge for web hosting, so after paying $299.40 to Site Leader for another year of web hosting for the e-classics.com site, which was the amount due according to Site Leader, the content for e-classics reappeared and the spam went away. Even after the payment, however, whois still has e-classics.com in the sole name of ENOM.
The spam is still up at racquetresearch.com. I transferred the domain name last year to Jaacob Bowden, with a year of prepaid web hosting through May 2011. May 9, 2011, is the deadline for renewing the registration. Site Leader is the web host and responsible for renewing the registration, but ENOM is the purported owner of the domain racquetresearch.com and there is no way to contact ENOM. Site Leader and ENOM are trying to sell the domain name before it has even expired. Is there no way for me to renew the registration on behalf of Jaacob Bowden so Site Leader and ENOM won't get a windfall from allowing it to expire.
I am getting the impression from the simultaneous appearance of spam on two sites (I only have put up two sites) and its disappearance on one of them after I had paid an excessive charge for its web hosting to Site Leader, that I am a victim of a scam that might properly be called "web hostaging." And if the racquetresearch.com domain (page 1 on Google for "tennis racquets") expires through ENOM and Site Leader failing to renew it for their customer so they can make a bonanza by selling it for themselves, what could you call that? How can I rescue the good name and content of e-classics.com and racquetresearch.com and get them away from Site Leader and ENOM? I have attempted to email them but they do not respond.