Beware Domain "Tasting"
A distasteful trend has become more and more prevalent in recent months called "Domain Tasting." If you have thought of a domain you would like to use, DON'T check its availability until you are ready to actually register the domain...
You've thought of the perfect domain and you want to see if it's available. That's perfectly natural. So you go to a domain registrar and type in your new domain name. Good News! It IS available. Now you know, so you decide to think about it for a bit, perhaps overnight.
The next morning you decide to go ahead and register it, but what's this? The domain is now UNAVAILABLE. Someone registered it within a space of just a few hours! Oh well, bad luck, right?
Probably not.
A disturbing new trend has emerged called "Domain Tasting." Spammers have found various ways of monitoring searches of people checking availability of new domain names.
Taking advantage of a loophole in the regulations, they register these domains and set up spam sites that will generate money through sponsored ads if the domain happens to get a fair amount of traffic. If the domain does not generate enough traffic, they will usually "cancel" the registration within thirty days (you have to be a registrar to be able to do this, which the spammers are).
If the domain you wanted is grabbed what can you do? Not much. Best bet is to wait a few weeks and then see if it has been released. If it hasn't, probably best to move on.
A better option is to avoid getting "tasted" by NOT checking any domains you want until you are absolutely ready to plunk down your money to buy them.
