What the Hell is Going on With .uk? Dozens of Domain Names Sold in Error, Then Reversed
upstart writes in with an IRC submission:
The perilous state of the UK's internet space has been exposed once again, as the second largest seller of .uk domain names admitted last night it wrongly sold dozens of valuable internet addresses.
Eagle-eyed dot-UK registry watchers noticed unexpected changes in ownership of various .uk names over the weekend - including sunset.uk, waterfall.uk, pad.uk and trending.uk: all of which were sold by Fasthosts to one or more industry insiders rather than going through the proper public process.
The domain names were supposed to expire and drop onto the open market, after which all domain-name traders could compete to catch the addresses and resell them later on. Instead, though, Fasthosts allowed at least one of its customers to renew and obtain the domain names on the day of their expiry, just before they were due to drop.
That meant certain folk had a mile-long head start snapping up valuable domains before the rest of the industry could have a fair crack at acquiring the dot-uk addresses. We dived into the world of catching expired .uk domains here if you want to know more about how it works.
Fasthosts said the sales were "a mistake," with its head of sales and marketing Michelle Stark telling The Register on Wednesday that 38 expiring domains had been renewed and shifted before they publicly dropped in a "one-off online transaction" due to "human error."
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.