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ICANN switches off .mobi land-rush flipper

Kevin Murphy, May 17, 2010, 18:13:58 (UTC), Domain Registrars

ICANN has terminated a domain name registrar that seems to have been made its business flipping land-rush domains, especially in .mobi.
Mobiline, doing business as DomainBonus.com, is an Israeli outfit that received its registrar accreditations about five years ago.
While it seems to have registered a very small number of domains, domainbonus.com did provide DNS for a few thousand dictionary .mobi domains, registered during the September 2006 land-rush.
A lot of these domains appeared to have been originally registered in the name of Mobiline’s owner, Alex Tesler.
Many have been since been flipped and archives of the DomainBonus front page show the firm was mainly preoccupied with aftermarket sales rather than fresh registrations.
ICANN has revoked its accreditation (pdf) for failure to pay its dues and escrow Whois data with Iron Mountain, as all registrars must.
ICANN is also switching off Western United Domains, a Spanish outfit that appears to have no web presence whatsoever, for the same reasons.

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