HACKER Q&A
📣 blackmailadvice

Someone registered my personal name as a domain name to extort money


Someone's registered my personal name as a domain name and blackmailing me to extort money. What are my legal option to get that domain?

Laws in my country is not well defined and legal route will take a lot time. Is there anything I can do by approaching the domain registrar and web host? I am broke and don't have enough money for a legal fight


  👤 LinuxBender Accepted Answer ✓
I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advise and probably not great advise.

You said you are broke, so that rules out lawyers. Emails however are free. Contact the registrar and datacenter provider and advise them you are working with a legal team to have their registrar status revoked and AS number revoked for the ISP. Maybe barter with a kvetetcher to nag them daily. There are no grounds for revocation of registrar accreditation, but if the right person reads your email, they may just dump the domain to make the problem go away. Ethics aside, lieing is legal. Debt collectors do it all the time.


👤 karmakaze
In addition to all the other suggestions posted, compete with the domain. Register the same name with a different TLD and post content, perhaps a blog, with better SEO to obscure the other domain from search results.

👤 Nextgrid
I don't think you can do anything about the domain itself, but if he's using the domain to spread slander you can do something about that.

👤 HelloWizman
Your personal name is not unique. Also, there's no law that forbids to register domain with someone else's personal name. Do you really need this domain? Then buy it. Otherwise, simply don't care about it.