Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

Unless your trip to TRAFFIC Las Vegas or to DomainFest in California was paid for by your employer, it’s time to take a good look into your credit card and even your bank account, for any unauthorized charges.

The days in TRAFFIC Las Vegas were packed with events – and of course after hours everyone had a great time attending parties, social gatherings and impromptu get-togethers – all while consuming higher than usual quantities of alcohol. Welcome to Vegas, baby.

Unless I spend cash that happens to be in my wallet, I use my credit cards, as they provide protection over unauthorized charges. However, there was a single time while in Las Vegas that I made the mistake of using my debit card in order to withdraw cash.

Even though I went to an ATM of my very own bank somewhere off the Strip, it appears that the location was rigged with a card skimmer. In essence, my debit card was “copied” without ever realizing it and three days later I received automated phonecalls and emails from my bank’s alert system.

The bank notified me of suspicious activity and use of my debit card and upon examining my account online I noticed two transactions that had occurred outside of the US. Some crook used my card and spent approximately $300 buying chocolates at an overseas supermarket. I hope he chokes on it.

Thankfully, my bank immediately closed my card and reversed the charges at no cost to me. It’s definitely the last time that I’ll be using my debit card to withdraw cash at a tourist location away from home. Crooks are everywhere – just search for “Card Skimmers Las Vegas” in Google.

Yesterday I went to Raglan Road, a posh Irish pub in the Downtown Disney area. The temperature outside hovered just above the freezing point; it was the first time ever that I didn’t feel out of place wearing a hat and gloves in Florida.

Inside the restaurant, the beautiful dancer occupied most of the central stage, while us, the patrons enjoyed our meals, ogling her moves. Fish and chips was definitely creamy and fresh, despite being served in a clean piece of cooking paper instead of the traditional newspaper. This is Disney property, after all, and sanitation is more important than tradition.

The various items on shelves, full of rich Irish culture reminded me of times that have long passed by; when deals closed with a firm handshake and a man’s word was unbreakable.

The Irish immigrants to the US were looked down upon, they had to stick to their own but once cornered, those feisty individuals wasted no time in defending their own.

On their footsteps, Greek immigrants helped build the railroads that connected the east and west through the mid-west and the plains of America, often being treated with contempt and racial discrimination for their initiative and dare to venture onto a new land that wasn’t their place of birth.

Every time someone attempts to belittle you, who speaks low of you, who due to his own failed mind attempts to bring you down, that’s the time that the gloves are off. That’s the time that you become a giant, a union of all men whose steps you’re following to achieve your life’s goals with no power other than your own.

The DomainGang.com project has been a baby of mine for the past three months. Although it was conceived long ago, sometimes it’s easy to plan and dream than to create, nourish and grow. Other times, it’s easier to be pure and full of ideals than to be wary of other people’s intentions and to carry a stick for defending yourself.

In the long run, it’s better to squash the bugs before they become roadside monsters that demand your unwilling contribution each time passers-by want to reach your entertainment establishment.

In just 90 days, DomainGang.com has achieved a Google PR3, an Alexa rating of about 43,000 and a followship that despises regurgitated news. DomainGang.com is offering the option to its readership to expand their minds, to remove their blinders and to read between the lines of the domain industry.

DomainGang LLC will be present in both TRAFFIC Las Vegas and DomainFest, in different formats. To those that are willing to see what DomainGang does, what it offers currently and what the future beholds for the domain business – see you there.

Just remember: the gloves are off.

In the past, I’ve been critical to the point of harshness with Sedo. The multi-national corporation that monetizes and auctions domains is definitely a major player in the domain industry; an industry still in early infancy.

With that in mind, when things go wrong I often go off on a “rant” to make it clear that I, the customer, is always right. Although I strive to maintain a level of professionalism in my statements, I make it loud and clear so that I’m heard.

Over the years, Sedo has improved their services, methodology and even their PPC. Yes, there are times that things get frustrating: low advertising volume causes loss of spending and loss of revenue for the Sedo accounts.

However, Sedo’s customer service has always been top notch, hard-working and eager to resolve any issues that might arise. In the end, even when a situation appears to be frustrating Sedo’s customer service has delivered.

The Sedo platform is without a doubt the biggest domain selling market on the Internet. Sedo’s customer service is always eager and willing to listen to suggestions, recommendations for improvement and often offers a surprising and satisfactory resolution to customer issues.

It’s an opportunity for everyone to adjust their ways of communicating their problems and to ensure that business is improved and expanded, in the wonderful world of domaining.

As I traveled by airplane during the change of the year, I could not but notice how the rules of the traveling game have become stricter. After the incident with the Nigerian terrorist who attempted to blow up a Delta Airlines plane bound for Detroit, there is no more room for mistakes.

TSA’s new set of regulations include enforcing restrictions of flying to high-risk individuals, tighter control of carry-on luggage and manual “frisking” of travelers. Despite the inconvenience caused by this detailed checking of human flow, the end result is higher security and flight safety for all air travelers.

Meanwhile, for the third time I’ve had a non-paying bidder at Sedo from a country in the Middle East.

Although Sedo supposedly collects information that verifies the identity of individuals and companies, it’s unacceptable that a pattern of non-paying bidders isn’t eliminated by enforcing similar rules to those observed by the TSA.

Sedo should restrict domain bidding by “domainers” that originate in countries with a high rate of fraud or non-payment. As a US-based corporation, there is little one can do with so-called “binding” contracts between US-based sellers and those outside Uncle Sam’s reach.

Prevention is better than sitting and wasting one’s time and locked down PPC revenue, all while waiting for the foreign prankster to unveil their lack of commitment to a business deal.

The current argument over the Snapnames rebate seems to be that there is more than meets the eye in the recent Nelson “Halvarez” Brady scandal.

Both victims and non-victims of the “Hank Alvarez” scam, which materialized while he was a VP of Engineering at Snapnames, seem to want a lot more beyond transparency from Oversee – the parent company of Snapnames.

As far as monetary damages are concerned, my out of pocket loss is well-defined in the document sent by Rust Consulting, the company hired by Snapnames to investigate the forensic evidence of the shill bidding and auction tampering that Nelson “Halvarez” Brady engaged into.

The approximately $2,000 I stand to receive back from Snapnames is a well-timed holiday bonus. After examining the 49 auctions I participated in and won against “Halvarez”, the monetary loss is restricted to the amount offered in that rebate. Despite the fact that I spent time carefully researching and bidding on these domains, I do not feel that I lost an additional amount of money that could be accurately calculated, without engaging into some form of emotional and thus inaccurate demand from the company that inherited the problem.

I believe that a lot of other domainers feel the same; that the rebate offers an accurate depiction of the losses, with the addition of interest that rounds the loss up – clearly an attempt by Oversee to sweeten the bitter pill of shill bidding.

Furthermore, the announcement of the filing of a class action lawsuit does not resolve the issue of compensation for the class; it’s not defined in the lawsuit, and given the fact that the range of rebates varies substantially from the low hundreds to the hundreds of thousands of dollars, one cannot assume that a class action lawsuit would ensure higher payment for the class. In other words, the bulk of domainers who lost small amounts *might* not receive much more, with those that lost the most being at risk to receive less than the average amount.

It all comes down to logistics: what is the amount of effort needed in order to pursuit higher return from Oversee. Additionally, if the proverbial feces hit the fan, Oversee might attempt to file for Chapter 11  protection which would freeze the currently allocated funds for a prolonged period of time.

Would I like to see justice delivered, in the form of legal action against Nelson “Halvarez” Brady and whoever else is guilty of defrauding thousands of domainers over the course of five years? Of course. And that’s currently pending, the next move by Oversee against the sole identified person in this case.

But I don’t want blood money in excess of my losses.

Now that the Snapnames auction history data is available as far back as 2004, the next question is: Did Nelson “halvarez” Brady act alone, both in the bidding alias sense and in the real wold sense?

In other words, was “halvarez” the only Snapnames account used to jack up prices in auctions – and did Nelson Brady have accomplices in this digital fraud?

If we look at the bidding volume, “halvarez” appears to be a prolific bidder, with more than 50,000 domains directly affected by his shill bidding activity. To establish the method of carpet bidding, “halvarez” took advantage of a little known fact: that one could place initial bids after the deadline had passed.

Once he was in every auction of domains dropping on that day, “halvarez” would attempt to delete all the auctions he participated in; the key was to avoid being a single bidder. Because of the mechanism in place, any auction that had other bidders participating would ensure that he would not be removed from and that he’d be a 2nd, 3rd etc. bidder in a row of participants; ready to take it to the next level at the private battle among those that entered the auction.

This was the safe method that frustrated many and which was shared by an elite few that discovered exactly what “halvarez” was doing and replicated it successfully – not for the purpose of shill bidding, but for the purpose of safely entering a large number of auctions.

The person that obviously knew of this loophole was the VP of Engineering, Nelson Brady. He exploited it to his benefit over and over again, during the course of several years. Once safely in a number of auctions, he was able to peruse the ones that others participated in; almost surely peeking at ongoing reserve prices and being able to monitor live the strategies of several big domain players. These players eventually stopped using Snapnames, leading to speculations that they were either frustrated by the artificial antagonism caused by “halvarez” – or perhaps after other arrangements took place.

On several occasions, “halvarez” was defended upon by Snapnames employees in various domain forums, alleging that he was “not suspicious of any wrongful activity” and that he was a “high-volume bidder”.

If Snapnames indeed  researched the background of “halvarez” after several domainers started to report his activity, it would appear that all research was stopped by a high ranking Snapnames officer, who had the authority to divert all research to results of his choice.

Therefore, it is not clear at this point whether Nelson “halvarez” Brady acted alone, or whether he abused his power as VP of Engineering, in order to shield himself and his activities from scrutiny. It is not clear whether the research was re-established after Snapnames started losing auction revenue – particularly after Namejet became a big player – or, whether someone had inside information on the activities and became the “deepthroat” in classic Watergate fashion.

The following weeks will definitely be very interesting to watch. Snapnames and its parent company, Oversee, will have a lot of hard work to do in order to reassure the domain community that the culprit of this large-scale fraud has been isolated.

While everyone is awaiting the next wave of the Nelson “Halvarez” Brady tsunami to hit the domain shores, the lingering question is obvious: will there be more transparency in the future?

Oversee is currently rushing to wrap up the Snapnames shill bidding scandal in a manner that does not instill confidence. The forensics company that was hired by Oversee to investigate the scandal is most likely driving the specifics of the “rebate” that was announced. However, this is clearly a method by Oversee to minimize any collateral damage, while giving the impression that the Augean stables would be clean.

But is this the case?

Snapnames has removed and currently does not provide access to crucial historical data older than 2 years, related to the exchange of bids per auction performed. The ousted former employee, Nelson Brady – a VP of Engineering no less – was allegedly driving a shill bidding process under the handle of “halvarez”, participating in thousands of auctions over the course of several years.

Transparency is a key element here, and Oversee does not seem to fully understand that they are not exactly doing what they should be doing: reassuring the Snapnames customers that their losses will be compensated, by providing access to historical data that is currently unavailable.

Due diligence must be performed independently by each person that has a reason to challenge the upcoming outcome of the forensics company’s research.

This is the first major wave that paints the domain industry in a rather unflattering light; it’s the first of several that – unless transparency is established – will severely hammer the domain coast. Because currently, there is no transparency in the PPC sector; there is no transparency in the drop-catching business and there is no transparency in the way domains are handled, transferred, secured and resold.

So while many – myself included – got upset with the TechCrunch article which called the domain industry “dirty”, perhaps that will be a stepping stone in order to begin the process of instilling transparency in every aspect of this Wild West called “domaining”.