All Scherr Technology Clients should avoid checking their domain name ideas on any Network Solutions website. It has been confirmed that once entered on their website, your domain is put on hold by the registrar and made available to third parties. In the future please only check domain availability at InterNIC’s website:

http://www.internic.net/whois.html

Special thanks to Jay Westerdal for confirming this story.
A summary of his post and link to the original follows.

Network Solutions steals domain ideas; Confirmed!
January 8th, 2008 by Jay Westerdal

“I am confirming that Network Solutions steals domain ideas when people check domain availability on the Network Solutions website. They seem to have started the practice of stealing domain ideas on December 16th 2007 according to our Domain History database but I was just made aware of this practice today. I am appalled at the concept of taking people’s domain ideas and registering it before the consumer has the ability to manually register the domain.

It is a deplorable action that Network Solution would announce potential domain names to the entire world. If a customer chooses not to register the domain name with Network Solution they are forced to wait 4 days for Network Solutions to delete the domain name in the Free Add Grace period. After the four day hostage period the consumer is free from the hostage situation and can register the domain somewhere else. However Network Solutions has now exposed those domains to Domain Tasters that will snipe those domain up milliseconds after Network Solutions deletes them. By registering the domain Network Solutions is exposing the domain in the DNS and every computer in the world now knows about the domain. These domains are now easy fodder for scammers and it is mind blowing that Network Solutions would expose their customers queries to the world in this manner.”

Continued…

Tags: ALERT, client, clients, DNS, domain availability, domain name ideas, domain names, entire world, grace period, hold, hostage situation, internic, Net Neutrality & Stats, network solutions, scammers, snipe, third parties, Website, whois