In an attempt to find out more about the practice of domain name front running, Internet security expert Benjamin Edelman conducted a domain front running study on behalf of ICANN. Front running is a term that was first coined in the world of finance, where it is used to refer to an illegal practice of brokers trading on their own account after having gotten insider information based on orders of their clients.
I have written about domain name front running on this blog a while back. In late 2007, ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) was investigating front running already after discussions about such practices in the domain industry. The SSAC did not find any evidence for the existence of domain front running. Shortly thereafter, in January 2008, domain registrar Network Solutions was accused of domain front running. The evidence was overwhelming in that case and Network Solutions quickly reacted to it, albeit it suffered a severe loss of reputation.
Now, ICANN has issued another study, but the result is the same: Benjamin Edelman, the security expert, did not find any evidence for the existence of front running in the domain industry. In three rounds of running tests at popular domain registrars and domain lookup sites over ten months, with a total of 600 tests made, no evidence could be found.
Luckily, front running is no common practice you can observe every day, but my feeling tells me that it does exist and is practiced occasionally. If you want to play it safe, I recommend only using domain registrars and whois tools you trust. This way you will at least minimize the chances of becoming a victim of domain front running.
It is possible that front running was more common in 2007, which is why it is too bad that the SSAC did not find any evidence back then. Today, front running is less of a problem, in my opinion, because ICANN got rid of domain tasting. This means that it would be too expensive for front runners to register great masses of domain names. Taking this into account, front running does not seem like a profitable strategy anymore. As a result, the abolishment of domain tasting might also have done away with front running.
The full report from ICANN can be found as a PDF on ICANN’s website.
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In 2008 I have seen a misuse by name.com through advertisement links placed on who.is. They have hold the domain for some five days, then released it – but it was pretty annoying indeed.