According to an email sent to all of its clients tonight, the domain name registrar Moniker.com notified its client they did a “system-wide password reset” tonight that will require ALL Clients to reset their passwords.

Here is the email Moniker.com send out tonight:

“”Moniker’s Operations & Security team has discovered and blocked suspicious activity on the Moniker network that appears to have been a coordinated attempt to access a number of Moniker user accounts.

“”As a precaution to protect your domains, we have decided to implement a system-wide password reset. Please read the below instructions to create a new password. You will not be able to access your Moniker account until these steps are taken.

“”In our security investigation, we have found no evidence that domains have been lost or transferred out. We also have no evidence that any confidential or credit card information has been compromised.

“While our password encryption measures are robust, we are taking additional steps to ensure that your personal data and domains remain secure. This means that, to be absolutely sure of the security of your account, we are requiring all users to reset their Moniker account passwords. ”

“Please reset your password by following the directions below.”
“In our security investigation, we have found no evidence that domains have been lost or transferred out. We also have no evidence that any confidential or credit card information has been compromised.”

“While our password encryption measures are robust, we are taking additional steps to ensure that your personal data and domains remain secure. This means that, to be absolutely sure of the security of your account, we are requiring all users to reset their Moniker account passwords. ”
Please reset your password by following the directions below.

1) Go to Moniker.com and click the “Sign In” button in the upper right hand corner of the home page. Select the “Forgot Your Password” link.

2) You will be directed to a page to “Retrieve” your Moniker Account Password. When prompted, enter your account number and click “Submit”.

3) You will be directed to a page that displays the message below. You will receive an email from Moniker. Please follow the instructions in this email to complete the password reset.

As recent events with other large services have demonstrated, this type of activity is becoming more common. We take our responsibility to keep your domains and personal data safe very seriously, and we’re constantly enhancing the security of our service infrastructure to protect our customers. We feel it is also important to be clear that we view this as attempted illegal activity and have taken steps to report this to the appropriate authorities.

There are also several important steps that you can take to ensure that your data on any website, including Moniker, is secure:
•    Avoid using simple passwords based on dictionary words
•    Never use the same password on multiple sites or services
•    Never click on ‘reset password’ requests in emails that you did not request

Thank you for taking the time to read this email. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience of having to change your password, but, ultimately, we believe this simple step will result in a more secure experience. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Moniker Support.

Our support team is standing by to assist at 800-688-6311 or outside the U.S. and Canada: 954-607-1294.

Drake Harvey
Chief Operations Officer
Moniker.com

 

Yesterday we wrote about domain names related to Kim Kardashian and Kayne West’s rumored  baby’s name and pointed out some recently registered domain names, who owned them and what was being done with the domains.

One of the domain name we pointed out was kaidencedondawest.com, which yesterday was registered under privacy and listed for sale at Bodis.com

Yesterday, after reading our story one of the readers of TheDomains.com went to the domain, bought the domain name which was listed for a Buy it Now (BIN) price of $100 and paid for the domain.

Today the reader got this email today from Bodis:

“”Unfortunately, the seller has had to cancel the sale. ”

“Your account has been refunded.”

“Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for using Bodis!

Regards,
Jackie Parkinson
Bodis – Our domain is your domains
Phone: (877) BODIS-44 ext 802
Email: jackie@bodis.com
Skype/AIM: JackieBodis
Web: http://www.bodis.com”

Just to be clear the buyer had paid for the domain yesterday.

Today he was refunded.

After he received the email from Bodis.com, the buyer noted that the Buy It Now price had been raised to $1,000

Several minutes later the buyer wrote TheDomains.com and let us know that the price had been raised to $1,000,000

Yes the priced of the domain, on a buy it now basis was raised from $100 to $1,000,000 in less than 24 hours.

We reached out to Bodis who informed TheDomains.com that they did not own the domain name and the domain was listed by a client who refused to transfer the domain.

In response to an email we sent to Bodis about the matter, Matt Wegrzyn the CEO of Bodis said:

“”‘The domain that was listed for sale is not owned by our company. ”

“We are a parking company that lists domains for sale on behalf of our customers (similar to Sedo, and other parking/market companies). ”

“The seller simply refused to go through with the sale & transfer the domain so we have no choice but to cancel the transaction.”

“We only act as the escrow agent between the buyer & seller.”

“Hope this explains it.”

Well IMHO the explanation is not good enough.

A marketplace has to stand behind the transactions both from the buyer side and the seller side or it ceases to be a marketplace, it loses all credibility and that is all a marketplace has.

If a domain is listed on a buy it now basis and a buyer buys the domain and makes payment then the platform needs to make sure the domain is transferred to the buyer at the listed price.

Anything less than that is not acceptable.

We understand that a a platform can’t hold a gun to a seller’s head to make them transfer a domain but they certainly can and should immediately terminate the account of the defaulting seller, like a defaulting buyer and do everything in their power to make sure that the person who refuses to follow though a transaction is barred for life from the system yet even after our emails and a phone call with Mr. Wegrzyn, the domain name kaidencedondawest.com is still on Bodis’ system and continues to have its new “buy it now” price of $1,000,000.

The default of the seller on the transaction is clearly against Bodis own rules and TOS which state in part:

“”Section V

5.7 The transaction will be complete when Bodis has received payment from buyer…

“All purchases and transactions are legally binding agreements. ”

“Once the buyer has agreed to terms during the purchase and made a payment for the domain, then there is no way to undo the transaction.”"

Apparently unless the Seller just decides the don’t want to honor their obligations.

Bodis response to the matter in my opinion is not satisfactory.

It sucks.

If people are allowed to list their domains at a BIN price and not follow through with the sale, at the very least the platform should publish the name of the dead beat seller and bar that person and any company they are associated with from the platform as either a buyer or seller, forever and they should immediately remove all domains in their  account from the platform.

The fact that this domain continues to be hosted by Bodis.com with a new “Buy it Now” price of $1,000,000 is nothing less than shameful.

 

Google is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its Adsense program.

Here is what Google had to say about the 10 year anniversary:

“Ten years ago we launched AdSense to help publishers earn money by placing relevant ads on their websites. I can still remember the excitement and anticipation as AdSense went live that first day. Our small team huddled together in a cramped conference room, and right away we saw that publishers were as excited about AdSense as we were.

Fast-forward 10 years, and AdSense has become a core part of Google’s advertising business.

The AdSense community has grown to include more than 2 million publishers, and last year alone, publishers earned more than $7 billion from AdSense.

AdSense is a community that thrives because of all the content creators we are so fortunate to partner with. Their stories inspire us to do our part to make AdSense great.

On this occasion, it’s especially inspiring to hear the stories of partners who have been with us since the very beginning—like a retiree in New Zealand who was able to pursue her dream of writing about her garden, a tech support expert in Colorado who can spend more time with his kids, and a theme park reviewer who now sends employees around the world to test and review rides—all thanks to money earned from AdSense.

The NewDomains.org conference is coming back to Munich on October 27th-29th and the CEO of ICANN Fadi Chehadé is going to be the headline speaker.

The program focuses on three tracks: Legal, Marketing and Registries/Registrars for the new gTLD program.

The conference is being put on once again by United-domains AG.

I attended the last conference which was in 2011 and it was a very well run conference, with great networking events.

The draft agenda is already published here

Registration is already open.

At present we are offering an early bird special for 490,00 + VAT until July 15, 2013.

Thereafter it’s 690 + VAT.

All prices in Euro’s

The event will once again be held at the  Sofitel Munich (The same as 2011) which is  a very nice hotel and convenient to everything in Munich and being next to the train station easy to get to.

 

In a blog post, DomainIndex.com looked at  seasonality in parking revenues and concluded what most of us long time domainers already knew.

The summer months are the  slowest and the Winter months of November- February are the strongest months of the year for parking revenues.

In its post DomainIndex.com write:

“We have been able to use a database of 137,000 parked domains across many different verticals and parking companies. ”

“Most of the traffic was type-in traffic we estimate only about 15% is expired traffic. In the 4 full years of data (2009 to 2012)  that we had, this particular portfolio lost on average 7.5% of revenue every year with stable amount of visitors. We normalized this (virtual) portfolio from the overall decrease in revenue and these are the results we found: