[anewguy9000]

maybe i wasnt clear - its listed for sale by name cheap. i am open to other explanations, but im just sharing my experience of what happened. the whois record shows name cheap as the owner. thats the "basis" for my point here. why would they do it? well read about what happened with icann, lots has been written about the incentives and state of affairs today. if you could link to some policy that states this practise is not done (like how some companies privacy policy calls out if they sell your data or not), that would be great, but otherwise baseless comments like this are not helpful

[KomoD]

> its listed for sale by name cheap

You yourself said it wasn't.

> it's now "make an offer"

"make an offer" shows up for all registered domains, clicking it will show you:

"Powered By DomainAgents"

"This domain is not listed for sale, but you can still make an offer. DomainAgents will track down the domain owner, present your offer, and bring them into the negotiation."

> the whois record shows name cheap as the owner

You mean it shows up as the registrar?

Like this:

> Registrar: NAMECHEAP INC

And possibly:

> Registrant Name: Redacted for Privacy

> Registrant Organization: Privacy service provided by Withheld for Privacy ehf

(that meaning you don't know who actually registered it.)

Do you want to disclose the domain?

[anewguy9000]

got it, thanks. indeed looking again at the whois record, the registrant info is redacted, and the make offer link takes me to domain agents.

so i may have jumped to a conclusion here, but ultimately though my question remains: i searched a domain on namecheap, it was available, and then suddenly it is taken a couple days later. the domain itself appears unused and for auction, and the registrar is also, conveniently, namecheap. so if namecheap isn't the actual registrant holding it for ransom, are searches shared or sold to third parties looking for potentially valuable domains? whatever happened it's hugely suspect - so the net effect is that im hesitant to search with or use namecheap again for my next domain without some insight here