Plea deal resolves long-running Mugshots.com extortion case

Sahar Sarid and co-defendants sentenced to probation. The three remaining defendants in a California criminal case involving Mugshots.com have been sentenced after entering into a plea agreement. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced charges of extortion, money laundering, and identity theft against the four alleged operators in 2018. According to Becerra’s office, the site published [...]

The Greatest Domain Stories of all time – Part 1

Today we are going to take a trip back to the past, a time before anyone knew Rosener, Berkens or Schilling. A time when many corporations, especially those outside of the tech sector did not know if they should even grab a domain name. According to Wired Magazine only one-third of the Fortune 500 had registered [...]

Alstom’s cybersquatting arguments did not compute

Panelist shows how train maker’s bad faith arguments didn’t make sense. A recent UDRP decision at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) raises interesting questions about complainant diligence and reverse domain name hijacking. Alstom, a French train and rail manufacturer, filed a dispute against the domain name AlstoMarketing .com. The company became aware of the [...]

Registrar stats: GoDaddy rebounds and Namecheap surges

GoDaddy back above 600k monthly adds; Namecheap adds nearly 400k .coms. ICANN has published the latest data from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) covering the .com namespace. The data covers January 2025. Here are some takeaways from this month’s data: GoDaddy had a better January than the month prior (when it dipped below 600k), although it was [...]

Ex-Synapse CEO reportedly trying to raise $100M for his new humanoid robotics venture

Sankaet Pathak’s last startup, fintech Synapse, filed for bankruptcy in 2024 amid issues with partner Evolve Bank & Trust. Tens of millions of dollars in deposits made by consumers, mostly customers of fintechs that worked with Synapse, remain unaccounted for. Yet according to The Information, Pathak is reportedly moving full steam ahead on attempts to [...]