Bank of America Buying Abusive Domain Names

December 30, 2010 by admin

I wasn't going to go a diary today, but I just picked this up off of Slashdot and it is too juicy not to share, besides why waste a day?

Nite_Hawk writes "From the Article: 'Bank of America has snapped up hundreds of abusive domain names for its senior executives and board members in what is being perceived as a defensive strategy against the future publication of damaging insider info from whistleblowing Website WikiLeaks. According to Domain Name Wire, the US bank has been aggressively registering domain names including its board of Directors' and senior executives' names followed by "sucks" and "blows."'"

What follows are selected comments from this post on Slashdot.org. If you are following the WikiLeaks or Internet stories, you really own it to yourself to get familiar with this site.

Good luck grabbing every possible abusive word and all variations. "Sucks" is hardly the only word in existence that can be used to mean you smoke cock or gobble knob.

The owner of sucks.com should start selling subdomain redirects for $~3/yr.

BrianMoynihanVacuumsRoosters.com looks available.

Yeah, did they also register bl0ws? blo.ws? sux.ck?

I'm proud to report that a friend of mine grabbed http://www.bankofamericasucks.org/ [bankofamericasucks.org] before BoA got to it. Currently it's just a redirect to an IT World article, but oh, the possibilities ... especially since she works for a hosting company.

Yesterday [boingboing.net] it was noted that they can do this but getting all of those available will exceed their available cash. Seems like a waste of time and energy.

Maybe they're just preparing themselves for some future "truth in lending" legislation.

FYI here is a torrent from thepiratesbay.org that will get you everything that WikiLeaks has released since June 2010. It's about 20GB so it will take a few days to download. This does not include the cablegate releases. This torrent will get those.

Also for your information and contrary to the report in Cablegate: All 250,000 Cables Leaked to Paper. Get the Truth now, the Norwegian paper does not have an exclusive on the unredacted versions of the cablegate memos. I have them also. In fact, they are available to anyone who can navigate thepiratesbay.org and use git.

Merry Christmas

UPDATE 5:01 PST Venice Beach
After so much rain, it's nice to see the sunset again.

UPDATE - a late comment from Slashdot that I really thought should be included:

What I don't understand is why they think this is even necessary in the new world we just entered a month or so ago.

Why should they have to buy up domain names?

Why not just have their friends at Visa/Mastercard deny the ability of anyone to buy a domain name which could (potentially) be used to engage in "illegal activities"?

Or have their friends in Obama's office of imaginary rights enforcement [cybercrime.gov] seize the domains for trafficking in stolen property?

Or have the host (Amazon or whoever) drop the websites? Paypal refuse service? EveryDNS drop the domain records [google.com]?

UPDATE Xmas Eve 10:20PST Wells Fargo Sucks Too!

I can't believe this. I just got off the phone with my business banker. This morning I went on-line to check my balance before doing a last run of Xmas shopping and noticed a $25 deduction on Dec. 15 for something labeled:

MERCHANT BNKCD FINCL ADJ 101214 481310888997 COSMOS ENGINEERING COM

So I called my banker to find out who they gave my $25 to and why. After 30 minutes of getting the run around, being put on hold, told to call around and try to find out for myself and talking to several Wells Fargo departments. Here is the short story:

I was charge $25 on Dec. 15th because the Merchant Account that I had closed on Aug. 2nd wasn't "PCI Compliant" in October. The Bank apologizes for the error, my $25 will be returned to my account before the end of the year. They just receive a memo on Dec. 1.

How can you consider an Account that has been closed "out of compliance"? No answer, we're sorry. How can you continue to charge fees to an account that has been closed? No answer, we're sorry. How many other fees have you charged me from this closed account? Sorry, that information isn't on my system because the account is closed.

Here is a recap of my other DKos dairies on this subject:
BREAKING - Digital Sit-Ins: The Internet Strikes Back!
Cyber War Report: New Front Opens Against Internet Coup d'état
Operation PayBack: 1st Cyber War Begins over WikiLeaks
The Internet Takeover: Why Google is Next
BREAKING: Goodbye Internet Freedom as Wikileaks is Taken Down
BREAKING NEWS: Obama Admin Takes Control of Internet Domains!
Things Even Keith Olbermann Won't Cover - UPDATE: VICTORY!!!
Stop Internet Blacklist Bill Now!
Sweet Victory on Internet Censorship: Senate Backs Off!
Internet Engineers tell the Senate to Back Off!
Why is Net Neutrality advocate Free Press MIA?
Obama's Internet Coup d'état
Julian Assange on Threat to Internet Freedom
FCC Net Neutrality's Trojan Horse
Free Press: Country Codes for the Internet?
The Mountain comes to Mohammad
Keith Olbermann's Deception
Court rules -> Google Must Be Evil & Maximize Profits
EFF on the Google\Verizon Net Neutrality Proposal
Google-Verizon: What is the Free Press Agenda?
End of the Internet As We Know It!
Free Press would make this Illegal!
Google Verizon Announce Terms of Deal