Beware of "cybersquatters" stealing domain names

A family physician in North Carolina loses control of his Web site to a company hawking sexual devices and women's lingerie.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. Nov. 18, 2002.

Greg Gibbons, MD, was jarred when he looked at his Web site in September and found that it not only looked radically different but also included unauthorized links to pornographic sites selling "sex toys" and female lingerie.

Even worse, the Cary, N.C., family physician was powerless to do anything to fix the problems because London-based A1 Web Services acquired ownership of his Internet domain name -- gibbonsfamilymedicine.com -- after he inadvertently failed to renew his right to it. Consequently, A1 Web Services controls the site Dr. Gibbons and his wife, Elizabeth, also a family physician, put up two years ago for their practice.

"When you put 'gibbons family medicine' [on Internet search engines], you still get my information, but they have complete control over it," a frustrated Dr. Gibbons said. "They can put links to child pornography if they wanted to. They can do anything they want. It's not illegal, and there's nothing I can do about it."

Dr. Gibbons was a victim of a practice known as "cybersquatting," in which others register domain names of existing businesses that failed to claim or renew rights to them. The objective usually is to resell the name at a big profit, but A1 Web Services has not attempted to sell it back to him.

"If that was all they had done, it wouldn't be a big deal. I'd tell them to either jump in the lake, buy it back from them or whatever," he said. "At this point all they have done is put a couple of minor sex links and as much as I hate it, I can live with it. What worries me is that they can do whatever they want with it." [...]