I was trying to register DomainMagnate ‘at’ gmail.com today and found out it’s already registered and belongs to someone else. No one else that I know of uses that username, so the only reason they might have to grab it is probably to try to sell it to me?! I’m just hoping they are not planning to use it for anything bad that might later be attributed to me..
If you have a valuable brand – get the gmail address for it before someone else does. This can also be expanded to other Social bookmarking and networking sites and in fact many companies offer this service: registering your brand name across 100+ social sites and creating profiles, which can also be useful for SEO if all the profiles link back to your site. But lets admit it having a gmail address for your brand is much more important than some digg or twitter account.
Gmail addresses can be somewhat valuable too, just like domains. However I’ve never seen any for sale, except on ebay and then they are not really “premium”, just long and lame and cheap too.
Another interesting thought is do premium gmail addresses get “type in” traffic, that is some random email leads, for loans@gmail.com for example? How much would a loans company be willing to pay for such a domain?
I kid you not, prior to reading this post, I tried “SullysBlog” at gmail and the same thing. So I tried a few more of my domains and they were taken as well. Go figure. I’m not too concerned because I can always use my own domains for email. I like the feature is gmail that allows you to have multiple gmail accounts logged in as one… that is the only take away.
Mike Berkens of TheDomains blog wrote today about a new forthcoming service at About.me.
At Mike’s blog is the link where you can reserve your User Name
now if you want to.
It might be because “Magnate” is associated commonly by people with something great. And I am not surprised it has gone by now. It would be good to used to contact end users?
I suspect perhaps someone in the domain community registered many gmail accounts of the Domainer User Names not already taken.
Google banned the sale and squatting of gmail accounts long ago.
If we can show that it’s the same person, perhaps Google will release the gmail User Names.
But how to prove it’s the same person?
If you are willing, please:
1.go to Gmail
–
2.type in your User Name but leave password blank
–
3.Click on “Can’t access my account”
–
4.On the next page, you’ll see:
“Forgot your password?
To reset your password, type the full email address you use to sign in to your Google Account. If you are a Gmail user, type your Gmail username.”
In the Box, type in your User Name not an email address.
–
5. Complete the Captcha.
–
On the next page for Password Assistance you’ll see:
“How can Google contact you about recovering your account?
Email to ••••••@h••••••.com Partially hidden to protect your privacy
Receive an email with a link that resets your password.”
–
6. Did you get the same partially hidden email address I did: ••••••@h••••••.com ?
–
7.If you did then it’s the same person and perhaps we can band together and ask Google for help.
I have stumbled upon your blog and this post and in particular, I am actually surprised that you think it is your email Do you have a trademark or some legal statis that makes it YOUR name? I don’t think so, so why then should you be so precious about this gmail address when you have the domain?
@moresotto – Google “DomainMagnate” – all the results are related to me
Update:
Since I apparently had no takers I put in your respective User Names to see if I could get a match.
Unfortunately the squatter didn’t use an email backup address
for your names.
However. MsDomainer started a thread on this topic at NamePros
as her ID is also being squatted at gmail.
One of the members there named ‘mellowmasher’ discovered his ID
is also already taken at gmail.
I put his ID thru the Password Recovery process and got this result:
“Password assistance for mellowmasher@gmail.com.
How can Google contact you about recovering your account?
Email to ••••••@h••••••.com Partially hidden to protect your privacy
Receive an email with a link that resets your password.”
That partially hidden email is an exact match to the result i received.
It’s clear that whoever is at ••••••@h••••••.com is squatting gmail accounts.
By the way, I hope you realize that this ID squatting is a potentially serious matter and goes beyond the inconvenience of not being able to get a gmail account with your User Name.
This squatter could impersonate each and every one of us as all these User Names are each uniquely ours.
That’s why I wanted to see if one person is behind this and see
if we can join together in getting Google to step in.
*
I’m not sure what Google will do about this, but we can do a lot to make sure that the public knows that any mail from these squatted emails are not from us.
*
Thanks for bringing this up. After I read the post on Namepros, I went and looked it up, and sure enough, my handle is taken. With my name, I *know* it’s directed at me, because my blog and the associated branding has only been in existence since July.
However, when I went through the recovery procedures, the same randomized @h******.com address did NOT come up for me. It was: ••••••@g••••.com.
I’m guessing that’s another Gmail address. This will be harder to track if the person’s using multiple addresses to sign up for these accounts.
I always use my company domain for anything domain-related, so no worries there, but if people haven’t received emails from me before, it’s very easy that they could assume that something saying domainsushi@gmail.com could be from me. *Note*: It isn’t.
For anyone interested I found 5 more Domainer User IDs taken in gmail accounts by the same Recovery email address: ••••••@h••••••.com
The 5 are:
Seven Mile (Frank Schilling)
Fusible
DNJournal (Ron Jackson)
Abel Arif
Domain Name News (Frank Michlick)
—
—
Password assistance for sevenmile@gmail.com
How can Google contact you about recovering your account?
Email to ••••••@h••••••.com
—
Password assistance for fusible@gmail.com
How can Google contact you about recovering your account?
Email to ••••••@h••••••.com
—
Password assistance for DNJournal@gmail.com
How can Google contact you about recovering your account?
Email to ••••••@h••••••.com
—
Password assistance for ArbelArif@gmail.com
How can Google contact you about recovering your account?
Email to ••••••@h••••••.com
—
Password assistance for DomainNameNews@gmail.com
How can Google contact you about recovering your account?
Email to ••••••@h••••••.com
—
That ‘h’ is probably from hotmail, so might still be different people. But it does make perfect sense for someone to grab them all.
“That ‘h’ is probably from hotmail, so might still be different people. But it does make perfect sense for someone to grab them all.”
Michael,
Highly unlikely it’s different people since the first part of all the emails contains 6 digits and I think you are so right it’s a hotmail address.
This post is really a fastudious one it assists new net people, who are wishing
inn favor of blogging.