I’ve been trying to get my family name .com for years. I have no plans for it but neither does the current owner. They either paid for like 15 years in advance or they just keep reupping. I am not willing to make them an offer since I want it for the bare minimum.
My family name .name seems also not used for the last 15 years, so I asked if I could get it but the guy told me that he and his family are using it for their email-addresses. So then I asked if I could have the my-firstname@lastname.name email address and he agreed and I’ve been using it ever since. But yeah the domain would have been nice for my family too. Instead I got a domain with the name of the village we lived in as children and my parents still own the house there.
I’d be pretty concerned if you got anything important or confidential to that address. While anyone in control of your email can see your email, Microsoft, Google and the like are much less likely to go snooping.
There’s a good chance the domain is just being used for email, and they just consider the dollar or so per month to be the price of their fancy email address. Moving all of your email over is a huge pain, so unless the owner dies or ends up in jail, I don’t think you’ll be able to get your domain name registered.
If you want some ideas for when you do get it: I made a family website that has a family tree in it (using a GEDCOM file generated from the gramps project), as well as a recipe database
My last would never be available but I have firstlast.com. My email is first@firstlast.com.
Not the best but whatevs I don’t expect to ever have a family anyway lol
I missed mine by 2 months and now it’s part of an expensive your@name.com email service so I’ll never get it (but google reminds me to check every year). I settled for my surname.org; I still had to scoop it up in the early 90s to get it.
I really want the .inc for my personal non-profit, but not for the $2500/yr the registrar wants for it.
“No I am definitely not just domain squatting this cool short domain name… I’ll do something cool with it! Eventually…”
I took the first step on the road to recovery by putting most my domains up for sale. At $5000 they are very reasonably priced and someone is going to pick them up very soon… Right?
Oh God, the late 90s site squatting pyramid schemes were crazy. “Pay us $1000 to hold 10,000 sites and we’ll pay you 10% interest off the profits of selling them.”
Look, Elon, X is never going to be a “thing”. Just get over it and move on.
Small price to pay for keeping your dream alive!
Oof. Salt in the wound. I just let one of the domains in holding expire this month.
$13 now.
And if you thought you were fancy and high tech by registering a domain in the British Indian Ocean Territory (.io), you’re paint three times that!
If you fell for buying a .cars or a .trust, you’re especially screwed, but I think you’d let your dream die pretty quick in that case.
And then a squatter immediately pick up that domain to put ads on it, rubbing more salt on the wound
