How can I undo my mistake?

I am in the process of moving several sites to DreamHost. I added a domain for DH to host, but inadvertantly typed a wrong name. Now it looks like I have hijacked someones site! How can I "give it back"?
dk

Ouch! Assuming that you have not (yet) been contacted by the "rightful" registrant. I usggest youstat by contacting them, explaining what happened, and arranging to return control of the domain.

How to find that previous registrant could be a little difficult. I have a couple of suggestions:

1) For a fee ($15 for one month) Domain Tools offers a domain "history" service that might be helpful. Start by visiting Domain Tools and checking to see if the whois record has already updated, showing your registration. If it has not, you might be able to contact the last registrant via the whois information returned.

2) Check google's cached pages, and the Internet Archive's Way Back Machine for older pages the domain used to host, in hopes of finding a contact point there.

Good Luck!

--rlparker

I don't see how you can hijack it if someone else registered it and has their nameservers pointing to their host.

In any case, I'd just delete it from your account. Domains -> Manage Domains, then click the X next to the domain.

I would more likely beleive they didn't pay their renewal fee.
Silk

My website

Are you talking about a DH renewal fee?

The only way I can picture that being possible would be if someone registered a domain, then entered ns1/ns2/ns3.dreamhost.com as the nameservers... but didn't have a hosting account here.

In that case, it's not hijacking... it's someone giving you a free domain! ;)

But what are the odds of that? You typo your own domain and end up entering a name that is not only valid, but is also pointed at your host with no other active account claiming it.

I'm adding Google to my account... I always wanted that site. :D

In reply to:
I added a domain for DH to host

If by 'added' you mean added via the manage domains section of the panel, then you have not really hijacked anything.

As seiler said; simply remove the domain from the DH system using the panel then add the correct one.

Mark

In reply to:
I don't see how you can hijack it if someone else registered it and has their nameservers pointing to their host.

You could initiate a transfer of someone's domain and, if it was not under "registrar" lock, and if the proper contacts did not respond to emails announcing the transfer with objections, under the "new" ICANN rules the transfer would take place.

Looking at the other responses in the thread, I suppose that it might not have happened as the OP reported, but I believe it could have.

--rlparker

Maybe if by adding the domains, he was talking about switching his registrations to DH -- but if he was just adding sites, I'd guess he's just pointing nameservers here and adding domains through the control panel... since you can pretty much type in anything and it will add it.

That's also true! wink

--rlparker

That is also quite possible - in which case, it isn't really a "hijacking" (though I suppose the traditional "cybersquatting" considerations could come into play, depending upon the domain and its use .

Of course, If the Original Poster just posted the domain name, we could dig a little deeper wink .

--rlparker

Thanks for all the replies.
We built a new site for a client, "honoringheroesjewelry.com" which is a valid domain, up for several months by another developer, who will soon change DNS pointer to DH. In preparation for our newly developed site being "the" site, I went to DH Domain Managment console & mistakenly added the fully hosted domain name "honoringheroes.com", which after a while of being prefixed with a clock, showed on my list of domains. When I clicked "visit", I was apalled to see someone elses page. Thus, my post asking for help.
Based on the several replies, I went back to the Domain Managment console & deleted it by clicking the "x". Again, thanks for all the replies, I am reassured that I did not actually affect someone elses site.
dk

Sounds like you handled it properly. That is probably going to fall into the "no harm, no foul" catagory. By deleting the domain from the DH DNS records, there shouldn't be any issues.

A Whois check of the involved domain still shows Network Solutions as the registrar, and the domain is in a "locked" status, so it isn't really susceptible to "hijacking".

--rlparker

Thanks again for your reassuring messages.
While fiddlin' around with this, I found that the shorter name, that I inadvertently typed, is up next month. I went to Godaddy & did their thing to try to quickly grab the name if it is not renewed.
Thanks,
dk