bingo.uk question

[RobM]

Just going through the lists now and does anyone know how this domain was registered on 20th by someone on a different tag to the rightsholder? Did anyone notice the actual registration - ie was it maybe registered and then 'sold'? I suspect we're going to find a lot more of these strange registrations.

 

[philiporchard]

I guess if anyone knows the intricacies of the domain game - Com Laude do.

 

[ian]

It was registered and immediately placed in suspension. I queried with Nominet and they said because it was registered with another registrar, they had emailed the .co.uk for validation. I came out of suspension the next day. The same registrar still has control of it as then. The same happened with bet.uk a couple of days later.

Wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if we suddenly see auctioned off. I wonder if the .co.uk owner 'actually' know!

 

[RobM]

That doesn't make much sense. So it was suspended because it was registered on a different tag... to a different person.... and then released from suspension because nominet had decided the original registrant validated it? We need to keep a list of anything that looks odd because this can all be used as evidence of potential mismanagement/fraud later on.

 

[Darren]

Wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if we suddenly see auctioned off. I wonder if the .co.uk owner 'actually' know!

As far as I am aware the owners do know and registered them with another registrar for redundancy purposes.

 

[RobM]

We shall see. Isn't it handy that registrant names have been removed from whois. GDPR was a godsend for nominet.

 

[BG]

The Bingo.co.uk domain for many years has been a really, really, really odd one... Something seriously fishy happened with this domain.

Originally it was owned by Gala Bingo (all the way up to March 2016) .. Then without expiring / dropping (it had years and years left on the registration as i was monitoring it back in my catching days)..

I then noticed around March 10th 2016 that the site disapeared - It was simply used as a portal site which defaulted users to GalaBingo.com after searching for their area). I noticed the nameservers changed and a new registrant appeared as "Ben Longstaff' - Then around March 20th he put a new website live with loads of affiliate links on etc..

I contacted Ben to see if he would sell Bingo.co.uk for £100k (from memory he wanted £500k to £1m). However, there was never any explanation of how the Bingo name was obtained! From memory Ben used to work with Gala Bingo dealing with their web / media stuff (he still operates in this sector).. Then around 5 years later i get a notification that the nameservers had changed again, hmm.. Upon checking it was back in the name of Gala Bingo and pointing back at an official site - I just found it really strange that Gala Bingo owned the domain since registration (1999), then it changed hands in 2016 (totally unexpectedly) and was then being sold by an online marketeer... then acquired back by Gala Bingo in 2016. I often wondered who the original admin email contact was for the domain e.g. was it a member of staff at Gala Bingo.. or was it an agency who was the default email admin contact? Over the years I've known many large companies be the actual registrar of the domain, yet the actual 'admin email' address has been a technical directors personal email address, leaving the company vulnerable or none the wiser...