The theft and recovery of Social.com in October, 2006 was made public by Guided Tour Software, Inc. when trying to give an example of domain name theft that marked the domain name industry. This seems to be the largest theft since the one involving Sex.com in 1995. Social.com has been placed on sale today, after the owner had the domain name secured.

    On October 18, 2006, when control of the name was released by NameSecure with absolutely no right to do so, the domain Social.com became a victim of social engineering. Scott Carter, President of Guided Tour Software, Inc. and owner of the domain, received an e-mail message from the Supervisor of the Transfers Department at NameSecure on  November 13. The line of events presented in the e-mail message was the following:

 - Someone posing as Scott Carter was able to gain access to Carter's account on 10/11/2006 and changed the Registrant data to another individual.
 - On 10/18/2006 the domain name social.com was transferred out of NameSecure to GoDaddy without the authorization of Scott Carter as the Registered Name Holder.
 - The domain name was returned to NameSecure as Registrar and to Scott Carter as the Registered Name Holder on 10/27/2006.


Scott Carter stated: "The Supervisor that I worked with at NameSecure to recover Social.com took the theft very seriously and responded with a sense of urgency and professionalism". Carter also appreciated DomainTools.com for their domain name history and for their quick response in recovering the name. The identity of the thief was not discovered and Carter considered the matter closed. When asked about what eventually happened to the name, Carter said that he had moved the domain name Social.com in December 2006 to the Registrar Moniker.com, because of their excellent reputation for domain name security.    

Getting many valuations on the professional domain name forum of NamePros.com, the importance of the theft of Social.com started to be considered at quite a large extent. The value of Social.com was estimated in the seven to eight figure range.

Carter said: "The experienced members at NamePros.com saw tremendous value in a generic, recognizable name with international relevance that produces hundreds of millions of search engine results. Since announcing that Social.com would go on sale, I have seen strong interest from social networking companies, venture capital firms and some Fortune 500 companies."

The domain name Social.com is now on sale at Sedo, a professional global domain marketplace company. Carter explained: "The successful buyer will be purchasing a solid investment that can engage areas such as mobile social networking, video sharing, Web 2.0 applications, politics, dating or even Social Security services. The proliferation of sites such as MySpace and YouTube provides an opportunity for a timeless name that can stand out from a crowded space". For more information, you can visit http://www.social.com.