[Vision2020] Holding government sites for ransom

[Robert Dickow]

I have just encountered another example of an old scam: site hijacking and
ransoming.
 
I won't divulge the domain, but a former web domain used by an Idaho
government agency was acquired by an unknown person or persons in China.
There, an 'adult' site was put up under the domain and then the domain was
offered to be sold back again at a fee. The 'porn' site itself is probably
even a bogus one at that, set up solely to embarrass the former domain
owner. WWW users who had put in links to the government site, or had that
URL as a favorite bookmark in their browsers end up unwittingly going to the
porn site instead, so that forms the incentive for the buy-backs. Now, the
governernment requires all organizations to use a .gov domain, which is
controlled through their DNS so they can be shut down instantly if they
want.
 
Be aware too, if you ever buy domain names for your business or club, that
if you just buy something like "MyMagicClub.org", there will probably be a
bot or person out there lurking and will buy up "MyMagicClub.com" and
"MyMagicClub.net" in order to hold the names ransom and offer to sell it to
you at a high price. That happened to me, though I didn't want the other
high level domain extensions anyway, so I actually got the better of the
scam, because it's costing the other guy money. Ha!
 
Bob Dickow
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