The directNic guy is a major domain-stealer / squatter who abuses his position as registrar to that end. Sorta like a domain-squatter with superpowers.

I ran into trouble with them when my [first initial, last name]@rice.edu email address expired. I had some domains with DirectNic which were soon to expire, but I had lost my DirectNic password. I figured it would be no big deal to contact them and have my account changed to [first initial, last name]@alumni.rice.edu; the same person, obviously enough. This is what I got in response:

Greetings,

First of all, you are not the owner of the directNIC account whose username is ‘[character name used in paper-based role playing game in 8th grade]‘, and login information will ONLY be sent to the owner of a directNIC account. Thus, you must have the owner of the directNIC account to contact us. Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance.

Thank You

Khanh Ngo
DirectNIC

At the time, I didn’t understand why they were stonewalling me. I didn’t care to deal with the attitude so I figured I’d just let my domains lapse. I backordered with another service, and I waited.

As it turns out, that’s exactly how DirectNic’s scam works. When a customer’s domain lapses, they don’t release it like you’d expect. Instead, they transfer it to a shell company and hold it for ransom. I didn’t want to suffer the indignity of buying my own domains back, so I switched all my sites to new domains instead.

I searched google and found that the same thing had happened to other people, such as this guy.

Holding expired domains for ransom isn’t the only way DirectNic abuses its power as registrar. It appears that they also register domains based on search results.

Anyway, that’s my experience with DirectNic. It’s been years now, and a directNic shell company is STILL squatting on one of the domains I registered through them.