I never thought I'd have to deal with it. All the weight of naivete and the evils of the Internet came crashing on me this morning as I looked at a site with my name as its domain name - glendaclaborne.com. A site with gibberish home marketing stuff. I'm so distressed about it.

I have discontinued my web hosting account on that domain name with GoDaddy.com in 2006 but tried to maintain the domain name and an email account for forwarding notifications on autorenew. GoDaddy claims my credit card has expired which is not true - it has never expired. But I haven't been checking that domain name for a year now.

So, just to warn others: don't register your personal name as a domain name unless you are sure you can maintain it forever (in all its possible domain endings) or you are a famous person whose name somebody might register as their own. Once it gets into a registry database, it stays there. You fail to keep it up (i.e. pay for it) and it's up for grabs. I used my name as a domain name from 2002-2006 for a website that I used for practicing my HTML and CSS skills. I couldn't think of a better name then.

I've just learned that there are services like JustDropped.com that opportunists can use to search for domain names including ones that are about to expire. It just blows my mind why anyone would be interested in glendaclaborne.com if their name is Cheryle Hayes - the current registrant for this domain name. It was certainly a website that was not receiving much traffic as it is with this current website. The administrative contact email for this domain name indicates that this Cheryle Hayes works for a nondescript search engine optimization company called SEONitro owned by a Dori Friend, somebody who actually developed tools to make anti-spam not work. The actual operators of glendaclaborne.com are their clients and they seem to operate from overseas - Chinese.

I've spent my day reading ICANN regulations such as this one on Redemption Grace Periods for Deleted Names. We have a long way to go to protect individuals from predators on the Internet.