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Moto7451 6 days ago

I worked at a company that used MM and was involved in some of the domain work.

One of the really nice things about the service is they handle a lot of the general business continuity and security stuff that can really suck with traditional registrars. One of their main lines of work is they’ll work with you to resolve tld-squatting and typo-squatting by working directly with the registrars.

Even before an infinite number of vanity or scammy tlds started showing up it would be pretty difficult to find <your-growing-unicorn-startup>.biz to add to your portfolio of domains since the owner may just have forgotten to update their email in their registrar and were coasting on a 10 year registration. Maybe the squat was intentional and it’s now a 1:1 replica of your homepage with a phishing or other credit card scam going. Stuff like that really sucks to do yourself while handling your other responsibilities. MM was pretty successful at getting in touch with the owners in the first place and having the registrar yank and transfer in the latter case. YMMV of course.

Once a lot of tlds started showing up, and especially the porn related ones, they worked with the new registrars directly (like GoDaddy in the .us case here) in the “sunrise period” to make sure something like google.xxx doesn’t become a front page article about an actual porn site (in case you’re wondering, that one doesn’t go anywhere at all). Your other options are to work directly with each registrar or ICANN.

throwanem 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Oh, I didn't know they'd been around since '99. They called me on behalf of a Hollywood titan about one of my hobby domains, which happened to partially coincide at a dictionary word with one of their client's trademarks, some time around 2006. I don't recall that the approximate paralegal I spoke with actually identified the company; I never forgot the call, but hadn't thought to check who manages the studio's own domain. Go figure.

I found them surprisingly easy to deal with, and happy to have me on record that my toy domain had nothing to do with either their client or any money. I assumed as long as that remained the case I would never hear from them again, and for the decade or so longer I kept the domain, that was exactly how things went.

prmoustache 6 days ago | parent [-]

I may be wrong but I think I saw MarkMonitor changing hands a year or two ago so the MarkMonitor of today might not be at the same level and quality of service as before.

throwanem 6 days ago | parent [-]

Yeah, in 2022 acquired by some kind of sketchy rollup of lots of legacy/web-1.0 firms or what remained of them, it looks like.

Oh, well. It's been a long time since I was so naïve as not to do a quick informal trademark/brand search before I register a new domain, so I don't really expect to hear from them again any time soon, either.

sidewndr46 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'd argue the ability of a private company to exert control over all TLDs on the behalf of their clients is indicative of a problem in the domain registrar system. Not a "service"