5-day Add Grace Period (AGP)

Provision instituted by ICANN for registrations of domain names, allowing registrants five days to cancel a domain registration; an unintended consequence is that cybersquatters can test-drive domain names and pay only for those that are profitable.

Cybersquatting

The act of registering domain names, especially those identical or confusingly similar to existing trademarks, with the intention of reselling them at an inflated price or otherwise profiting from them in bad faith.

Direct Navigation

The act of typing a Web address into a browser’s address bar. While it typically leads to higher conversion rates, it also leads to typos and other user errors that are often capitalized on by cybersquatters.

Domain Name

An alpha-numeric string separated by dots at each level; translates long IP numbers into easier-to-remember labels. It is the basis of Web sites, email, and other Internet related functions.

Domain Name Kiting

A practice in which participants leverage the 5-day add/drop grace period mandated by ICANN to “keep” names at no cost by perpetually adding and dropping them. Under this scheme, a domain name can deliver profit to the owner even if it yields just pennies per year.

Domain Name Tasting

A tactic used by some cybersquatters in which perpetrators leverage the 5-day add/drop grace period mandated by ICANN to “test-drive” a domain name. If the Web site does not generate a profit, the registrant cancels the registration before the fifth day at no cost.

Drive-by Spyware Deposit

A practice that preys on consumers by targeting common typos of very high-traffic brand sites to infect machines; software can be used to access confidential information on a user’s computer.

Dropped Domain

A previously registered domain name whose registration was allowed to lapse by the original owner, who refused or forgot to pay the renewal fee. A dropped domain returns to the “available” pool of domain names.

Expired Domain

A domain name that has not yet been dropped from the domain name system, but whose renewal date has passed. Many people track "good" expired domains in hopes of registering them when they drop.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

The governing body of the Internet, advised by the U.S. Department of Commerce; has day-to-day responsibility for establishing policies and managing the operations of the Internet’s domain name system (DNS).

Lapse

The process of removing a domain name and its corresponding record from the DNS.

Malware

Software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent. Refers to a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code including spyware.

Parking

Temporary use of a mandatory name server offered by a domain registrar until the registrant purchases a hosting plan or points the DNS to a different site.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

A technique that charges advertisers a fee each time an Internet user clicks on a link served via keyword relevance; occurs on sites in which domain name registrants serve recycled search engine ads to users who practice direct navigation; PPC Web sites are collections of sponsored links.

Phishing

A variety of deceptive techniques used by criminals to compel Internet users to divulge their personal or financial information. This information, in turn, is used to commit identity theft, and wire or credit card fraud.

Sunrise Period Validation Agent

A validation agent hand-reviews each application during the sunrise period for a fee. First, the validation agent ensures that the applicant has a valid prior right to a trademark. If the prior right is acceptable, they then validate whether the domain applied for meets the sunrise criteria (i.e. some TLD registries may specify that if the trademark is COALITION AGAINST DOMAIN NAME ABUSE, then COALITIONAGAINSTDOMAINNAMEABUSE.TLD would be allowed, but CADNA.TLD would not). Well established domain application validation agents include Deloitte and Laga.

Top-Level Domain (TLD)

The letters that follow the final dot of any domain name, i.e., .com, .net, .edu, etc.

WHOIS

A widely used protocol, built into various Web databases, to determine the owner or registrant of a domain name.