How My Domain Turned Into a Porn Site, and How I Got it Back

I’d purchased the domain yjohny.com sometime in the late 2000s, and had been posting on it sporadically in English and Chinese for a couple of years when I discovered one day that the domain wasn’t working. I think this was sometime in 2010. Apparently I’d forgotten to renew it. I can’t remember exactly what happened, but I think the credit card I had it set to charge automatically expired, and I somehow missed the renewal notices that were sent to me. Anyway, the domain had been picked up by someone else. I was bummed.

To make matters worse, pretty soon the domain was redirecting to a porn site. I had links to it on twitter and LinkedIn, and I got some kind emails from friends saying things like, “Um, I’m pretty sure that’s not your site.”

I tried to contact the new owner of the domain to purchase it back. At first they wanted a ridiculous amount, but I eventually negotiated them down to $100 (still ridiculous?). Unfortunately, their preferred method of payment was “wire me the money, then give me your domain registrar account info and I’ll switch it over,” which I didn’t feel that comfortable with, so I decided to just let it go.

At various times I toyed around with finding a new domain name, but I couldn’t find one I liked, and I wasn’t excited about switching the wordpress install over to a new domain. Then a couple of. O the ago I noticed that they had let the domain expire (I guess it wasn’t bringing in more than ten bucks a year for the porn site), so I used GoDaddy to do a domain back order ($20, including a year of registration if you get it). It took a while, and I learned that it can actually take 70+ days after a domain expires for it to become available, but I ended up “reclaiming” the domain.

So here it is. Maybe every once in a while I’ll have something to say!