As parking companies get more sophisticated, scammers get creative.

Ask any domain name parking company what their number one nuisance is and they’ll say fraud. Click fraud is big, but it all starts with trying to get an account at the parking companies.

One large parking company told me it approves fewer than 1% of the applications it gets. They’re not trying to be selective; it’s just that 99% of the applicants are trying to set up accounts to perpetrate fraud.

It used to be that these scammers would just submit bogus applications with the hopes of slipping one by. Desperate ones would try to buy parking accounts from legitimate users. But as parking companies clamp down the scammers are getting more aggressive.

Consider the guy who set up an email account at Hotmail with my name as the email address, and then sent emails to a parking company “vouching” for a particular applicant in order to get the account approved. (The parking company smelled something fishy and called me to verify.)

But that’s small potatoes these days. One scam artist sent an email to a parking company stating they worked for a particular large portfolio holder. They asked for a teleconference to discuss using the parking service, and even got on the phone with the parking company. But the person didn’t work for the portfolio holder. They just wanted to try to get an account.

There also might be a security breach adding to the scammer’s arsenal. One of the checks a parking company runs is verifying the social security number or tax ID of the applicant. Someone has managed to get this information for at least one well known domainer, and is using it to apply for accounts.

What can the individual domainer do to help stomp out fraud? Not much. But if someone emails you asking for a referral to a parking company, don’t do it unless you know them. And if someone posts in a forum asking to buy a parking account, immediately report it to a moderator.

There are many similarities between baseball card collecting and domain names.

I suspect that many domainers collected sports cards growing up.

There are a lot of similarities between baseball cards collecting and domaining. We like to show off our prized domains. We often gravitate toward certain themes, such as collecting four letter domains. We monitor pricing trends. We go after “scarce” domains such as LLL.com. And we constantly try to buy, trade, and sell our way to a better collection.

That’s why I think many of you will enjoy the book Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession by Dave Jamieson. The book chronicles the creation of baseball cards in the late 1800s through the near demise of the industry at the turn of the century. It’s style reminds me a lot of a similar book for our Industry, The Domain Game.

After reading the book I see even more parallels between the industries. There are the same types of characters, personalities, and egos in both industries. Some of the people profiled in the book remind me a lot of the more colorful people in the domain world. There’s also the lack of respect and heavy skepticism sports card collectors had until they proved everyone otherwise, which many an early domainer experiences. There are also conspiracy theorists in both industries. And there are the scandals: talk of manipulating cards and shill bidding at auctions.

I collected baseball cards as a kid in the mid-80s, only to stop and forget about them in the early 90s. Like Jamiesen, I checked back in on the baseball card collecting universe after the turn of the century. About a decade ago I created an online store selling unopened wax packs, primarily from the 80s. I would buy boxes on eBay and sell them by the pack at a hefty markup.

But I was also jaded. The industry had changed. Baseball cards were no longer scarce, meaning that card companies had to find ways to manufacturer scarcity. Thus started the era of selling baseball card packs like lottery tickets with so-called “insert” cards. You also needed an encyclopedia to keep track of the dozens of sets available each year. Not to mention plucking down a fiver to get one pack. It just wasn’t fun. Kids naturally started to gravitate to video games and the web.

By the early 2000s I was already a domain collector. While I flirted with getting back into baseball cards I realized what I didn’t like about it. I would organize my cards by team one day, only to want to organize them by set the next. Then I’d want to organize them by player. It was tedious. The internet and PC world have made things instantaneous. I can sort my domains by expiration date, alphabet, or TLD at the click of a button. If only they came with nifty pictures.

Mint Condition ends on a down note for the sports card industry. I can’t help but see parallels with the domain industry of late. Those people who got into baseball card collecting once the press started touting the value of cards got burned. We might look back and say the same thing about people who got into the domain name industry after the hype.

Security is only a minor concern for upcoming ICANN meeting in Colombia.

My image of Colombia is colored by the past. It’s an image of the days of Pablo Escobar, rampant kidnappings, crime, and guerrillas forces. It’s shaped by books such as Mark Bowden’s Killing Pablo and the 2000 film Proof of Life.

So when ICANN announced its December meeting would be held in Cartagena, Colombia, my first thought was “here we go again”. Another Nairobi. Another Mexico.

And I was a bit skeptical of Colombia’s new tourism slogan, “Colombia, the only risk is wanting to stay.”

Sure, or getting kidnapped and staying against your will.

But the Proexport – Vice Presidency of Tourism group assured me Colombia is a changed country: Tourism grew over 10% last year while worldwide tourism was down. Terrorist activity has been reduced to a fifth of what it used to be five years ago. Kidnappings are a third of what they used to be eight years ago. Over the past 10 years, the Colombian Public Force has doubled, becoming the largest and most well trained force in Latin America.

Just PR spin? I contacted ASI Group, a travel security and global risk intelligence company, to confirm what I’d been told.

“Improvements made over the last decade are really significant,” said Shanna Wayhan, ASI Group Intelligence Analyst for South America. She explained that the country had turned the corner ever since President Alvaro Uribe took office and the rebel movement has been in decline ever since.

And while crime and kidnapping continue to be a threat overall in Colombia, the numbers have diminished significantly. Wayhan points to May’s official kidnapping count of just five people across the country. Compare that to May 2002, when there were 302 reported kidnappings. The rebel group FARC continues to be the biggest perpetrator, but most of its activity is in rural locations.

Making things even safer for ICANN travelers is the location of the event in Cartagena. Multiple airlines fly directly into this safe tourist city, which has largely escaped the issues the rest of the country has faced over the years. Even if you have to fly through Bogota, you’ll stay within the safe confines of the airport.

In fact, anyone who traveled to the ICANN meeting in Mexico City shouldn’t even pause about attending this conference. Dan Johnson, Senior Chief of Operations at ASI Global (a Kidnap & Ransom Response affiliate) said, “Between Mexico and Columbia right now, I’d go to Colombia in a minute.”

“Columbia has a well deserved reputation for poor security based on what happened 15-20 years ago,” continued Johnson, “but the government has made significant strides that should be a model for other countries.”

Wayhan said there aren’t any specific security concerns with taxis in Cartagena, either, like there are in Mexico City.

Of course, ASI suggests taking normal security precautions. Be careful after dark and when traveling outside the tourist areas. Don’t walk alone in a dark alley. In other words, take the same security precautions you’d do in the typical U.S. city.

Feliz viaje!

.XXX to get green light, but the value to ICM registry has wilted.

Ex-ICANN staffer Kieren McCarthy is reporting that ICANN’s general counsel has spilled the beans on .xxx, saying ICANN will approve the new top level domain name tomorrow during its board meeting.

Make no mistake, this is a monumental moment for ICANN. If it were up to the organization it would have let .xxx die years ago. But an independent review panel found ICANN erred. And, despite having final authority, the board is ready to accept the panel’s finding.

But it also means something for new TLDs. Many new TLD applicants are in favor of .xxx being approved. Not because they give a damn about .xxx, but because it gives them a higher likelihood of being able to eventually introduce their own planned TLDs.

So it’s a victory for process and a victory for new TLD supporters. But what about ICM Registry, which will run .xxx (after jumping through a couple more hoops)? It’s bittersweet at best. It has waited a long time and spent inordinate amounts of money to get to this point. It kind of reminds me of Telnic, which waited nearly a decade to launch .tel. From the time it came up with the idea to when it released the domain name, the world of internet communications changed rapidly thanks to social networking. That all but killed the potential of the domain.

I don’t know much about the online adult world, but The Domains author Michael Berkens does. And he thinks ICM Registry may have missed the boat. The world of adult entertainment has changed drastically since .xxx was first proposed. The economics aren’t nearly as rosy.

So, like .tel, the eventual approval to run .xxx may have come to late to make it a viable business. (No pun intended.)

Company claims women has no rights to her first name.

Let’s say your first name is, I don’t know…Andrew. And you register Andrew.com.

There are of course companies that use the name “Andrew” as well. Could they claim that you have no rights to the term “Andrew” and be able to get that domain name through UDRP? Of course not.

But that’s what Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A., which published an Italian women’s magazine Grazia, tried to do to a freelance writer and cook living in Portland. Grazia Solazzi registered the domain name Grazia.us a couple years ago, only to be hit with the UDRP this year.

The complainant’s arguments might just be the most wrong-headed I’ve seen published in a UDRP decision. Check this out:

Respondent has not been commonly known by the domain name. The mere fact that GRAZIA corresponds to her first name does not imply in any manner acquired or exclusive rights or legitimate interest in it.

Hey, they’re right. She doesn’t have exclusive rights in her name. But she certainly has a legitimate interest!

Remarkably, panelist Daniel B. Banks declined to find reverse domain name hijacking against the complainant because the complainant has a trademark for Grazia. He cited two cases to back up this decision. The first one is a case where the complainant won the case, so obviously that wasn’t reverse domain name hijacking. In the second case, the panelist declined to find RDNH because “The Panel believes there is a real dispute between the parties” that went beyond the UDRP. Neither of those circumstances is apparent here. Makes me wonder if the panelist even read those other decisions he referred to.