I just found out that kenyatech.com has registered my realname as a .com-domain yesterday at directNIC and is now offering it for sale!!!

Thankfully I was never interested in that Domain, however it must have been myself having caused that, because of checking the availability somewhere out of pure interest.

I really would be interested to know which services you use for researching the domain availabilities and where it is safe to do so?

THX,
BZebra

They'll drop it within 5 days of registration. Just don't type the URL into the browser - it will give them an impression of "traffic" and a reason to keep it.

Really? Why do they do that?
Do they get refunded if they don't keep it longer than 5 days? They have paid for one year, haven't they?

Any tips as to where it is save to do whois searches without attracting this squatter-bot?

Firstly, have you trademarked your name? If no, you have 0.00 rights to it.

And yes, domain could be deleted within 5 days of registration, absolutely free. Even some registrars do offer this (some for a nominal fee of $1.00 or something).

Firstly, have you trademarked your name? If no, you have 0.00 rights to it.
No, it's not worth trademarking it, it's just my given name which I share with hundreds others worldwide and I wouldn't mind any of my namesakes using it either. I have my personal set already secured as cheap .de-domains. Actually it would be quite safe having the other tld's registered over KenyaTech, because from what I have read elsewhere they demand hundreds of dollars for seemingly any domain name they register. Truth be told, it would be interesting to know how to trick this bot into registering the domains you would like to be kept "safe" from others.

But that doesn't change the fact that someone/something has been spying on what I a was entering in a whois search somewhere because I now for sure that this name has not been registered before, so it did not expire. The only possible source of the could have only been myself.

How does one avoid happening such things? How does it work anyway?
Have I been using the whois search on one of their websites without knowing it or did they spy on search entries on serious websites?

How does one avoid happening such things? How does it work anyway?
Have I been using the whois search on one of their websites without knowing it or did they spy on search entries on serious websites?

You can avoid this by NOT using web-based whois searches. Like I've noted quite many times they, apart of being (in most cases) somewhat behind, could be spying on what serch terms people are using and then acting accordingly.

*THE* best and most accurate way to do a whois search is old good Linux shell, hands down. Then you could be absolutely (well, not so absolutely... :) ) sure that no one will be spying on you AND you'll always get upto-date records from the right registrar's whois server.

Good luck!

*THE* best and most accurate way to do a whois search is old good Linux shell, hands down. Then you could be absolutely (well, not so absolutely... :) ) sure that no one will be spying on you AND you'll always get upto-date records from the right registrar's whois server.

Oh, that sounds bad. Not that I don't like Linux, Windows is just so much more comfortable.

Any possibility to do this with Windows? Some open source program somewhere to download, maybe?

The Registry is actually your "best" source to check for availability. All registrars will
only check the Registry for any domain name status, and the Registry submits the
result only to the registrar being used to search for it.

COM & NET - Verisign (http://registrar.verisign-grs.com/whois)
ORG - Public Interest Registry (http://www.pir.org)
INFO - Afilias (http://www.afilias.info)
BIZ - Neulevel (http://www.neulevel.biz)

Given Verisign's past actions, it can't be blamed that a lot of people suspect they
themselves might actually be "selling" the info fed into their WHOIS search. But
that's a conspiracy theory, of course. :D

happened to me maube 4 - 6 times i got names within the 5 registration days, just make sure you dont visit it AT ALL