The Perceptus Back Story

Domain Name front-running is in the news on Slashdot again. This is the sneaky concept where bad domain name resellers and domain parking sites snoop on end-users as they look for the right domain name for their legitimate website.

E.g. if years ago I happened to use a bad DNS registrar to test if print-bingo.com was taken, and I didn’t register it right away, the shady DNS registrar would register it for themselves and then try to resell it to me at a premium – what’s worse is that currently they don’t even pay a dime as long as they cancel the registration within 4 days (or something).

So, we at Perceptus Solutions Inc., wrote a tool to try and avoid part of the risk, the “WHOIS” search.  Our web based tool is not bullet-proof. You can get false negatives. Plus, in theory, the DNS lookup can be snooped as well.

Nevertheless, for over a year, our Dig some domain names tool has been hosted on our random dumping ground called tools.perceptus.ca. We didn’t have a blog back then, so there was no where good to mention it. Today we have this blog, online video poker for money, so we’re posting it now.

Our tool avoids the WHOIS lookup.  I also suspect the DNS server used on our VPS is less likely to be snooped since it’s not primarily used by Joe-Six-Pack — If I was buying domain lookup data, I’d prefer the higher volume, more “real” data that big ISPs like Comcast, Verizon, or Rogers would have to offer.

So, there you go.  It’s free to use, and we don’t expect enough traffic for it to be worth snooping ourselves.  But you’ll have to take our word on that.