Picture this: you go online to see if a specific domain name is available; you use what is supposed to be a reputable site on the web; when you come back later someone has grabbed the domain name you were searching for (by the way it was shown as available when you searched); and, is holding it for re-sale.
Seems far fetched? Well eWeek has a story on their site this week:
Opinion: Whois Hijacking My Domain Research?
Leave it to the domain-squatting industry to come up with a way
to jump claims.Slide Show: Hijack: Who’s Advertising on My Researched Site? [1]
Why should you care? This is another attempt to use the web to and computers in a surreptitious way. Just when you thought web intermediaries were trustworthy… sigh…