You need to get in touch with your registrar to see whether this was the case, or connect to your domain registrar's control panel (if they offer one) to see if the domains are listed under your account.
If it is not the same registrar but your email address is showing as the administrative contact, set up a transfer to grab the domains for yourself and change the nameservers.
I found it out absolutely accidentally, when I was checking through whois if any other extensions for my domain names were still available (not to buy, just from curiosity) and... surprise, surprise!
Also, have you done a site:www.example.com on Google to see if there are any pages listed there? Might give you some insight as to what the scammer's game is.
I need to login to make any changes to those domains
If you need to LOGIN and it's YOUR EMAIL address in the record click LOST ACCOUNT ID then LOST PASSWORD and it should email it to you. If there is an additional challenge to getting that information, contact the registrar about what you have to do to get access to "your accounts" - some will require you to send (fax) a signed statement on your company letterhead, others require something notarized, but the fact that it's your name up there shouldn't make this too challenging.
If the contact email is your email address, you should not even need to log into that account to get them. You should be able to initiate a transfer via another registrar - the catch is you will need the EPP "key" code, but you might be able to email the registrar and ask them for it.
Last but not least, if the address, phone (and fax) on there is yours and you can prove it with (legal) documentation, domain names can be transfered via paperwork faxed to the right people. You'll have to find out how by digging around here: [afilias.info...]
I don't think getting the domain in your control will make you look any less responsible for any bad things done in the past. (maybe more-so)
So maybe there is something else that could be done? anyone?
bill and incrediBILL:
My e-mail is the contact for everything: registrant, Admin, Technical, Billing... There is a lost password feature, but they ask to enter not an e-mail address, but a user ID, which I don't know. And the registrar customer service doesn't answer my emails.
diamondgirl:
How did I find out about it? Like I said, I was just doing a lookup on my own domain names, and noticed that .info domains were also taken, and out of curiosity I decided to see who registered them and... surprise!
As for nameservers, it's eNom. I send them an email and got an answer: "Your domain was acquired through one of our resellers, so you will need to contact them directly for assistance with your domain name, login or DNS assistance. We do not have access to this data."
And no, these sites are not indexed by Google. Those are parked domains.
amznVibe:
You are very close to truth. The domains were registered through Sipence and nameservers are eNom's. It was Sipence customer service that I contacted first and they didn't answer. eNom answered, their reply is above. The domains were registered on September 24, 2004. They haven't expired yet. My registrar is Registerfly. Does Registerfly has smth to do with Sipence and eNom? I opened a ticket with them, no reply so far.
1milehgh80210:
you are absolutely right, actually I don't need those domains! Besides transfer is not free. All I want is my contact information to be removed from those domains, that's all!
You are very close to truth. The domains were registered through Sipence and nameservers are eNom's. It was Sipence customer service that I contacted first and they didn't answer. eNom answered, their reply is above. The domains were registered on September 24, 2004. They haven't expired yet. My registrar is Registerfly. Does Registerfly has smth to do with Sipence and eNom? I opened a ticket with them, no reply so far.
Sipence IS enom (for example they have the same physical address). eNom uses Sipence as a drop catching registrar and they did the huge free .info registration last year to boost up their registration numbers. Registerfly is enom's largest reseller (despite the interface differences, they use enom for all your registrations).
That domain is actually yours since enom gave all the .info's to the original .com holders. You just missed the notice from them:
[google.com...]
eNom registers the .info equivalents of nearly a million .com domains owned by its customers. Domain name statistics show that eNom registered 950,000 domain names between Sept. 27 and Oct. 4.
Seems we have another thread recently on this too:
[webmasterworld.com...]
My domain name was used with rip-off domain "abc.com" and garbage mailbox address as the registrar. But the contact info was "garbage@mydomain.com" where mydomain.com is MY DOMAIN not abc.com's.
The registrar was in China, and as such had no real contact or any sort of information for the record.
The culprit used a different named web site as a rip-off site WITH a spam combo.
S/he sent out spam messages with "abc.com" return address pointing to the web site, and of course administrators trying to find who it is owned by, immediately looked at the whois record of "abc.com".
What was the domain for spamming contact? Mine! So, I received about 200 angry admin messages to my "abuse@mydomain.com" in less then 10 minutes.
Solution? None. I just had to wait it out, until the spammer abbandoned the domain, and the registration. :-(
Tapolyai, your story is really horrible... I think registrars should do something about it, one thing is to put some bogus in WHOIS, but to put a real person and/or domain as a contact is an absolutely different ball game.
R.