[austin-cheney]

I had something similar happen a billion years ago.

I used to have this email address [e-mail] and a domain registered through Network Solutions using that email address. This was around the time that Verisign purchased Network Solutions. At some point the email mutated to [e-mail] whether by my error or theirs. At that time ICQ was the premier instant messaging tool because there was no other such thing. Around this point in time ICQ was sold to AOL including all intellectual property. The domain name for ICQ was actually icq.com, but AOL owned all similar domains for trademark reasons.

I could not get my domain free from VeriSign where it went into limbo at time of renewal and I could not get any help from AOL. The problem is that there was an account recovery tool for domain registrations, but it was based entirely upon email associated with a registration and I could not receive any mail at the icq.org domain. I was able to actually reach the person who managed online IP for AOL (as they had contact information in a whois for one of their domains) and still could not get help to resolve this issue out of fear weakening a trademark.

After 9 months of frustration I suggested some nonsense in the #gentoo IRC channel of Open Projects (later Freenode) that contained about 1100 highly active participants. I mentioned that Fort Hood just installed a tremendously huge internet pipeline, huge for that time, and they weren't using that bandwidth just yet. If an insider knew what they were doing they could easily use that bandwidth to DOS Network Solutions and take down a massive chunk of the internet. It was likely easier than it sounds because there was one of the fattest pipes around, with almost no security or monitoring, so you just needed some level of command and control and inside access. Before their purchase by VeriSign, Network Solutions was a government contractor managing most of the DNS registrations, so they still held many of the older DNS registration records. That's how my domain became associated with VeriSign.

The next day a sales rep from VeriSign called me on my landline at my college dorm offering to help resolve my email account issue.