Domain Name Blunders

There’s been more than a few mishaps when it comes to domain name registration; make sure yours is secure.
Mishaps happen across all sectors. There is a very special job for a small group of employees at the Department of Motor Vehicles – when applications for personalized license plates come in, this team determines if the proposed letters and numbers are appropriate for the open road. Unsurprisingly, anything considered explicit or unacceptable is swiftly declined; these employees prevent potentially offensive material from being on display on the open road. Domain names, however, aren’t subject to the same scrutiny as the license plate police, and there have been quite a few embarrassing blunders over the years.
Domain names represent more than your company name: they act as a digital placeholder for your spot in the market. Take that placeholder away and you no longer have a firm standing in the business marketplace! Allowing your domain name to fall into the wrong hands can spell trouble with a capital T.
If you’ve been doing your online research into this year’s GOP candidates you may have tried to access jebbush.com. If you have then you know you’re in for much more – or much less – than you bargained for. An anonymous person or group has set up an auto-redirect from jebbush.com to Trump’s campaign website, DonaldJTrump.com. Had Jeb gotten in to secure his domain earlier, he wouldn’t have been trumped (sorry, it was too easy) by his biggest presidential competitor.   
Domains can fall into the wrong hands on every level, no matter how big or small. Earlier this year, Sanmay Ved, student and former Google employee, bought google.com for a heck of a deal: $12. This was down to a flaw that had been previously undiscovered by Google, and it only lasted about a minute. Had this been done by a more nefarious source, the consequences could have been disastrous.
We told you about all the new release of gTLDs back in September 2015. These fantastic new domain accessories can also be used to harm your business’s online reputation. When the .london domain was released, a man named Michael Ross registered playboy.london in order to secure his spot as the ultimate ladies’ man in the UK capital. However, shortly after, , Hugh Hefner was on his case with a large team of lawyers, hoping to preserve his company’s – ahem – squeaky clean image. The moral of this story is businesses can’t stop at just securing the .com address, but rather need to cover all bases to make sure you are the only one deciding your brand’s digital persona.
Finally, we have the cheekiest of the cheeky, Brian Connelly. Mr. Connelly owns loser.com and has not been shy about using the site to voice his opinion on less-than-admirable public figures. After a poking fun at a few politicians with whom he didn’t agree, he had his first large-scale foray into celebrity shaming by redirecting visitors to loser.com over to Kanye West’s Wikipedia page after Kanye crashed the stage during Beck’s acceptance speech at the Grammys. And as if this person wasn’t getting enough media attention already, not to mention his nod in this article, loser.com now redirects to Donald Trump’s Wikipedia page. The lesson here? Not only your business website can be used against you, but other websites can be used to shame you as well.
We can’t stress enough the importance of securing any domain names that can be associated with your business, as well as the importance of setting up auto-renew. Midphase has your back with our auto-renew feature – conveniently located in your control panel – making sure you never get trolled by any haters out there. If you forget, you could be a victim of the recently released .sucks gTLD, which wouldn’t look great for your business.

Snap up your domain names over on our domain name search page.