After accumulating several hundred names I decided to take a break and pondered my next move. I didn’t have to wait long. Within a week I received a notice from my registrar. It seemed a registrar in Germany had someone who was transferring one of my domain names to their account. How could they get away with that? That was my first experience of having someone steal a name from me. I had heard of such things, but experiencing them first hand is much more real.

I quickly emailed my registrar and asked what was going on and that I had not given anyone permission to take one of my names. I was told my domain had already been transferred to someone else. I gave my registrar explicit instructions to cancel transfer, which they did immediately, and as soon as I got name back they placed a lock on domain so it could not happen again.

Confident I had solved problem, that incident quickly left my mind, as I had a myriad of other things to do. But no - things never seem so easy, as I came to realize a couple of weeks later. I checked my email and there was an email from that same registrar, where two weeks earlier someone tried to transfer my domain name. It was a form letter in both English and German telling me they were transferring my domain name to their registry. I asked a co-worker who was German to translate German language part. She verified that language said same as English version. All my domains were locked so there was nothing I had to do.