SilverShine - 3:33 am on Feb 25, 2010 (gmt 0)

OK. I wasn't seeking to be unhelpful or anything that could be regarded as being a negative spirit and I am sorry that I inadvertently gave the impression, at least to WW, that I was.

Although I pursued all the suggestions given to me that I could, none of them were, in the end for me, practical, economically viable or even worthwhile, such as reporting the theft to the local Police station, which was a total waste of time as the local police officers stared puzzling at me, with one of those "Homer Simpson blinking moments" when I told them that "a domain name I own was stolen"... tumbleweed drifted past us, etc.

With regards to ICANN and WIPRO, these organizations are not setup to help individuals with relatively small or low cost/value cases, as mine was and also, I did not find any organization/body of people that are actually setup to help someone in my position.

So what did I do?

I started searching in Google with all kinds of phrases and word combinations to see what experiences other people had, both generally as domain name thefts as well as those who had the names stolen while with the same registrar as I was with.

I eventually found a number of web forums/blogs which had a number of domain name thefts documented in detail, as well as first hand accounts of scandalous and downright criminal behavior being carried out by registrars, at all levels in their businesses.

I was in sheer disbelief as to what I was reading and the stories where all about well known internet/domain name companies, that everyone would all know of, immediately.

It was through one case of a domain name theft that I found the contact details of a past victim and who agreed to help me after speaking with me and checking on some info about the theft.
They then went on the offensive and publicized the theft on some web forums, to flush out the thief, which was successful.
The effect of this was like throwing a stone in a pond, with the ripple effect of other domainers joining in to denounce the thief, so effectively shaming them in public.

The thief claimed to be innocent of a charge of theft and went on and on defending themselves in great detail, but unfortunately for them, they inadvertently revealed in their postings that they were indeed the thief (because they were a bit dim/stupid) and once we informed the registrar of this effective confession and sent them the link to the thread, they were happy to restore the domain back to my account.

I am still not clear how my domain name was stolen, but I have changed to a registrar who gives private whois and account access restrictions via IP address, as standard and I have changed and reinforced all my account information.