Sedo Auctions Phishing Domains
I do recommend investing in IDNs - but only when appropriate. Appropriate means good commercial and similar terms in languages that use more than just English's 26 letters of the alphabet. However, domains that are simply English words, replacing a vowel such as an "i" with an "ì" are worthless. Their only possible value is for phishing.
Yesterday while browsing Sedo, the auction of Office.net caught my attention. I wanted to place a bid, but because the bidding was so low for what is such a great domain, I hesitated. If a deal is too good to be true, it probably is.
Upon further investigation, I found out that the domain on auction was actually offìce.net. What's the difference? Look closely - it's an "ì" rather than an "i" in office. I wonder if the winning bidder noticed that and whether the transaction will actually close. There is absolutely nothing on the auction to alert a person that this is an IDN - Sedo should surely have also written something like: in punycode, this is xn--offce-vsa.net.
Come on Sedo - how hard is it to alert people to deceptive practices like this? You are supposed to be providing a much safer and more sophisticated domain platform than places like eBay.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:49 pm Yeah that one got me confused too
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:58 pm [...] points out an interesting crack in the above relationship between you - the bidder - and sedo - the [...]
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:13 pm Thanks for the info - dooohhhh I was about to place a bid. Many thanks
April 27th, 2008 at 5:01 pm [...] DomainBits alerts us about some deceptive practices going on at Sedo: “Office.net caught my attention. I wanted to place a bid, but because the bidding was so low for what is such a great domain, I hesitated. If a deal is too good to be true, it probably is.“ [...]