It’s at least the second fake UDRP notice in the past two months.
A person imitating FORUM, a UDRP provider, duped Network Solutions into locking a domain.
It’s at least the second time someone has tricked a domain registrar with this scheme. Last month, a person sent a UDRP notice to name.com, which resulted in the domain being frozen.
This time, a person posing as someone with FORUM sent an email to Network Solutions claiming that a UDRP had been filed, which led to the domain being frozen.
Unlike name.com, Network Solutions provided the registrant with information about which UDRP provider allegedly sent the notice. Attorney John Berryhill reached out to the provider and confirmed there was no such case.
It’s not clear what the perpetrator’s goal is. They may want to send a follow-up email ordering the domain transferred to a new registrant that “won” the UDRP.
At this point, it would be smart for all domain registrars to add a verification step to their processes for locking domains upon receipt of a UDRP email.
In a truly insane development, after notification of this issue to Jeff Neace, the general counsel of Newfold Digital, these nutbars at Network Solutions have now locked their customer out of his account. They do not seem to understand that the issue was their compliance department’s inability to tell the difference between a real UDRP notice and a fake one, and now they are acting as if there was an account compromise.
The only compromise here is that a multi-million dollar value two letter .com domain name has been jeopardized by their own incompetence. Apart from potentially following up with a fake decision notice, the criminal could follow up with a fake “early settlement” notice and not have to wait around long enough to make it look like a UDRP decision.