TheDevil.com Continued

Well, uvtek.com now shows some silly gateway page, but up in the corner is a place where you can type in an offer to buy the domain name. On a whim I typed in $25 and clicked submit, and it brought me to another page that promptly told me that the minimum bid for my future domain name is $150! Robert S. Kieren must be making quite a profit from this little cybersquatting enterprise, assuming people actually buy domain names from people like him.

According to the WHOIS record for uvtek.com, it says my domain name will expire in August 2004. It also cryptically says the record is “protected,” which is “to help prevent malicious domain hijacking and domain transfer errors.” It goes on to say that “the registrar has protected the registrant of this domain name registrant by locking it. Any attempted transfers will be denied at the registry until the registrant requests otherwise. The registrant for the name may unlock the name at any time at the current registrar in order for a transfer initiation to succeed.”

That protected stuff sounds rather ominous, but I remain hopeful because there was a link at the top of the page that said “back-order this domain name.” I dutifully clicked it, whereupon I was told that “just $69 [per year] maintains your subscription and the EXCLUSIVE back-order position for uvtek.com. With your subscription, we will attempt to acquire uvtek.com for you the moment it becomes available again. As long as you maintain your subscription, we will work only for you.” Well, that is certainly cheaper than what Mr. Robert S. Kieren wants, although it did not appear to give me any kind of guarantee of getting the domain name.

I suppose next year sometime I will have to re-visit this topic.

TheDevil.com