Comments on: protect yourself online as best you can…

By: sandraraven15

sandraraven15 — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:03:51 +0000

Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog. Cheers! Sandra. R.

By: Bill Bartmann

Bill Bartmann — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:19:13 +0000

Excellent site, keep up the good work

By: KrisBelucci

KrisBelucci — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:54:27 +0000

I really liked this post. Can I copy it to my site? Thank you in advance.

By: John

John — Fri, 08 May 2009 20:52:06 +0000

Hi,

Wouldn’t a better analogy be that the mother cub killed the food and then paid no attention to when it would go bad and spoil. Then after it spoiled and her cubs were hungry, she went back to it and saw the “vultures” eating it because they can eat bad meat. The vultures didn’t touch it until after it expired and assumed the mother no longer wanted it. The “vultures” are hungry too and the meat has value to them and the mother did let it go bad. If the meat was truly important to the mother then she should have taken better care of it.

Just my opinion.

By: Frank

Frank — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:56:40 +0000

While I have some sympathy for the situation with your website you have to understand what happened is like what would happen if you did not pay a property tax bill on one of your clubs. The legal authority in question will sell the property at auction and excuses like losing the bill in your business partner’s mail won’t hold up.

Just like real world properties, domain names with age and popularity have value, some a lot of value. Letting them expire almost insures that someone will snap them up, especially if they have a desirable name. 1000′s of these transactions happen everyday through domain registrars like GoDaddy and Ecom. There are sites that aggregate this data and make it available like Freshdrop.net. Virtual real estate is a big business.

It is unfortunate that the person who snagged your domain is being a nasty jerk about it. $40K is quite unreasonable. On the bright side, there are several options you can pursue to combat this, depending on the situation.

By: David Leslie Anthony

David Leslie Anthony — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:10:56 +0000

I’m truly sorry to hear that Billy!! I had to deal with a similair problem whereby I had a “David Anthony” in London emailing ‘wanna-be models” all over the world that “he was casting for Glamour Magazine in the U.K.”. Both myself and Conde Nast (Vogue, Glamour, etc.) and I were getting phone calls and emails from girls asking if “I were casting”. The person was telling these girls that”all they had to do was send him $1500.00 for papers”. Both Conde Nast and I had to get both the London Police AND Interpol on this fraud! That’s WHY I now use my middle name on everything!! I’m STILL dealing with this bullshit from time to time. It DOES hurt a hardearned name and reputation!

David Leslie Anthony

By: hope

hope — Thu, 07 May 2009 04:24:07 +0000

Some people are unbelievable!! You really handled it well and the site looks great. I do hope that if you can go after this guy you do. So many of us are working our butts off to make a living honestly it really ticks me off to hear things like this. I’m sure he wasn’t even thinking of all the people he impacted. Selfish idiot.

Not sure how much this helps now, but I have all my urls on auto pay, so they automatically renew.

By: Friend

Friend — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:49:43 +0000

This is really a situation that should be investigated by the media. It’ll make a great story for an local investigative reporter….you must have that connection! (Turning a negative around)Plus they have cyber authorities and agency that can surely find out this impersonator! Just like they catch all the internet predators of child pornagraghy…It would eat at me until I discover this perbitrator and let him feel the heat of the public while pursing him like a felon!! Most of all it will reach the larger public mass beyond twitter….hang it there…good will always prevail over evil…thats just the way it is!!

Friend

By: Sonya

Sonya — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:49:59 +0000

Dear Billy:

I’m sorry to hear that you have gone through that. You are an amazing person with a big and beautiful heart and it is disheartening to learn that opportunistic idiots are being mean and hurtful. Keep sharing your blessings and doing what you do. This too shall pass and good will prevail. I wish you all the best and I’m sending you a thousand hugs.

Sonya

By: Lester Burgher

Lester Burgher — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:23:15 +0000

Oh Billy,

I’m sorry for your annoyance. It sucks when one of the most driven, focused and talented people I’ve met get sideswiped by a situation like that. You’ve accomplished so much in your life, and there are enough legitimate challenges that we all face…..it’s so discouraging when your efforts are couteracted by someone else’s greed or stupidity.

Keep up the fight.