When a company employs questionable tactics in its business practices, it is many times appropriate to chagrin it publicly in order to make others aware. In that vein, I would simply like to spread the news that Network Solutions (a company who used to be the only registrar of .com’s and other domains) has begun a very questionable tactic of automatically registering any domain that is searched for on its site.

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington writes, “So far they’ve registered over 72,000 domain names based on user searches. … This isn’t costing the company anything, either. Registrars are permitted to register domains for five days without paying any fees to the domain name registry.” After the five day period, they likely delete the domain in order to not pay for its actual registration. This five-day leniency was meant to allow registrars to efficiently deal with credit card fraud, but “the fact that Network Solution is using the grace period to stop users from going to competitors is well outside of the original reasons for the rule.”

Though domain tasting is not in any way new, this seems to be a twist on the already abused grace period—one that I hope doesn’t become commonplace and isn’t copied by other registrars.

For more information, see the article on Domain Name News or the TechCrunch article.