There comes a time when you might rebrand your business or you just have no use for an old web domain. It happens more than you might think. It may seem like a no-brainer way to save some money by releasing the domain name but every so often there is a case that illustrates why that is not a good idea. In this most recent case, it hits very close to home.

WestYorkPa.Gov

The Borough of West York like pretty much every municipality in the United States has a website. For the small borough of 4,617 it wasn’t much of a site, in fact it was your run of the mill .com site. In fact the borough itself never even owned it, it was owned by a former employee. That site worked for a bit until 2019 when borough manager Sean Mauck purchased a more secure .gov website for the borough. The old .com site, visitwy.com was then let go and became a dead site.

For everyone involved that seemed to be the end of it. The borough was operating with a more secure website and they no longer had to pay the money to maintain the old .com site. Everything on the web was updated to the new site including the Google listing, of which the borough received verified status. Things looked about as good as they could for a small Pennsylvania borough.

Except it wasn’t

Reusing A Discarded Domain Name

As happened with many discarded websites someone scooped up the domain. In some cases these discarded domains are used to sell counterfeit products or just to simply scam people out of money. Others are turned into pornographic sites and that was the fate of visitwy.com. This was verified by the author for research purposes on Friday May 1. 

For the most part that should have been no issue at all. The site has been dead since January of 2019 so everyone concerned should have moved over to the more secure westyorkpa.gov so no one should have been visiting the old site looking for municipal information or to pay their bills

Changing Information On Google Too

The problem was that someone managed to get Google to change the site listing from the new site back to the old one. That meant that when everyone went to Google, searched for the West York Municipal Building and clicked on the website button they would be in for one heck of a shock. 

This change was first found by the Facebook Group Meanwhile In Pennsylvania. After recovering from the shock, Mauck’s first action was to send an email to Google to find out what happened and to fix the issue. That is where the frustration set in.

Fixing Taking Too Long 

It took over a week for the issue to be fixed, a problem exacerbated ironically by the borough’s verified status on Google. The issue was fixed some time over the weekend of May 3-4. There are still a lot of answers needed as to how this happened and why no one at Google checked the change. It is not known if a bot managed to do this or if there was a human behind it and we may never know.

Some Important Things To Keep In Mind

This illustrates two very important points. The first is that you should always own your domain name. It may seem cheaper to let someone else handle that but you should always own it. If you own the domain you will always have control of it and no one will be able to scoop it up and use it for something else. Second, is that when you get done using a domain you should keep it. Retaining a web domain is not expensive, it costs about $15 per year which will not break the bank and by keeping the domain active something like this cannot happen. 

$15 would not have broken the West York municipal budget in the least and at the very least it would have saved the borough leaders a lot of embarrassment. We might all forget about this soon as we move on to bigger and better things like getting back to work with COVID-19 and continuing on with our lives. Do you think that Sean Mauck wishes West York would have kept the domain and simply redirected it to the new site? Probably. 

Keep The Old Domain NameAnd Redirect

Redirecting an old website to a new website is easy to do. Doing this accomplishes two things. First, it keeps the old website active so nothing like this can happen. Second it allows anyone who is unaware of the change to go to that site and be ushered into the new site. Whether they bookmark the new domain is up to them.

Own Your Domain Name

In this case there is also another lesson to be learned. The old web domain was owned not by the borough but by an employee. That might be OK while that employee is working for you but what happens when they leave that job, or maybe they become disillusioned at their job? By owning the web domain they give themselves an undue amount of influence and if tempted they can create some real havoc. 

It should be noted that there is no evidence that the ex-employee did this and it is more likely that someone simply scooped up an old domain name but the ability to change the Google listing does raise some eyebrows as that is not something that can be done easily, especially with a verified account. We may never know, but you should own your web domains. Your employees or a contractor may do your webpage work but YOU should own the domain name.

Fixing This Costs Time, Money And Effort 

Will something like this happen to your business should you discard an old domain? Probably not but there are enough examples of something like this that it should at least give you pause in doing it. A redirect from the old site to the new site is still your best option and keeping a domain name active is not an expensive proposition. Discarding that old domain may save you some money today but it could wind up costing you in the future.

There is a final point. As it seems with all issues when it comes to computer crime, fixing the issue takes more time, effort and money than trying to prevent it from happening in the first place. You might think that discarding that old domain will be the last time that you hear from it but there can be some serious ramifications should someone scoop it up and use it for nefarious reasons. Since it was your domain, people will blame you and look for you to fix it.

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