What happened to hippressurecooking.com?

It’s been stolen!

UPDATE: We got it back October 11th.  Well, we bought it back.  Read the update at the bottom of this post.

We’ve been having a bumpy road here the last couple of days. The popularity of the website, high number of search engine searches for “hip pressure cooking”, top position in search engine results and large number of links from fans rendered hippressurecooking.com a target for a “domain sniper”. On October 7th, the domain was stolen.  Unfortunately, this sniper was assisted by a disreputable domain host that violated our service agreement, registrar accreditation mandates and BASIC internet protocols to sell the domain from under us (tech details).  In short: we have a case.

I have been informed that we could make all of this “go away” by paying the scammers a $18,000.00 black-mail fee to recuperate the use of the domain.

We will not reward nefarious behavior.  

Instead, we have begun  the proper administrative process to recuperate the domain. This process will  take several months.  The secondary domains hippressurecooking.co, hippressurecooking.org and hippressurecooking.net remain un-affected. The hip pressure cooking Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ accounts and our newsletter mailing list were also not affected by the domain name theft.

 Now what?!?
In the meantime, we have accelerated our  future plans for the website. I’m proud to announce the move of the hip pressure cooking website to our new domain

www.hip-cooking.com

For now, and the next couple of years, we will continue to focus on keeping your pressure cooking hip.  The eventual plan, reflected in our new domain name, is to make all of your cooking hip.  And, just as you’ve seen with pressure cooker recipes here- “hip” means whole ingredients, helpful gadgets and a minimum waste of food, time, and effort.


In the meantime, please spread the word!
Please share the new domain for hip pressure cooking with your family, friends, websites and discussion groups.  The new address is: http://www.hip-cooking.com 

Want to help us make life difficult for the scammers?

Links and visitors are currency to SPAMMERS and SCAMMERS.  If we take those away, what they have stolen from us becomes worthless!

  1. Report broken links to websites and blogs. Whenever you run across a website that linked to a recipe or post on hippressurecooking.com, please let them know about their new location.  Send an email or fill out their contact form with this information. For example:

    Dear xxx;

    I noticed you are linking to hippressurecooking.com's recipe for [APPROXIMATE RECIPE NAME] from this page of your website:
    [INSERT PAGE WHERE YOU SAW THE LINK]

    I just wanted to let you know that, due to scammers stealing their domain name, they had to move the whole website to hip-cooking.com - only the domain name is changed, the rest of the link URL remains the same.

    Thank you!

    … and thank you for taking one link away from the scammers.

  2. Update Pinterest Pins -Go into pinterest, and whenever you have a pin from hip pressure cooking click “edit” and change http://www.hippressurecooking.com to http://www.hip-cooking.com in the address. The rest of the URL address remains unchanged.
    For example:
    http://www.hippressurecooking.com/2012/07/pressure-cooker-bread.html

    Becomes:
    http://www.hip-cooking.com/2012/07/pressure-cooker-bread.html

    Or, just delete the pin and come back to the new site to re-pin.

  3. Share the hip! Keep sharing your passion for pressure cooking.  Share your favorite hip recipes on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+ (scroll to the bottom of each recipe to see a little box that makes it easy to do):

    … and don’t forget to stop by to join our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ pages to share your pressure cooker recipe photos with us.

Thank you for sticking with us during this bumpy ride and to those of you who already sent me emails of support and encouragement. 

The scammers chose the wrong target.

We’re better under pressure!

Ciao,

Laura

UPDATE: We got it back! Well.. we bought it back. But not for $18,000!


 We were about to start the administrative process to re-claim the domain.  This process is said to usually have an outcome in favor of the original domain owner.  There is a $1,500 filing fee and – frankly- if that was eventually going to get the domain back we were willing to pay it to get the process going.

Since were able to get information on the domain’s buyer – just a company name, email and cell phone number – before the WHOIS record was cloaked with a “privacy proxy” (that would hide this information) I decided to try to contact the buyer again. I had already tried to call the cell phone several times and was hung-up on and no replies to the emails.

He might not answer, again but it was worth a shot before making a significant investment.

I did a reverse phone number look-up of the cell phone on the record (just cost $0.99 to do) to get the name of the person who was tied to that cell phone. Wen I sent the email I used his REAL NAME to make it clear that I KNEW who he was. With his name in hand, I easily found his linked-in profile and this jerk had an MBA and called himself an “internet entrepreneur.” Now you know that’s a code-name for stinkin’ professional internet domain sniping slime .

During the last couple of days, I interviewed several internet-law attorneys and was able to pick-up on enough legal lingo to make it clear that he did not have many options. Also, I did not want to negotiate so I framed it as a one-time offer.  I don’t want to disclose what I paid, but let’s say that it’s less than the filing costs of the administrative procedure and absolutely not $18,000.

This is what I wrote…


SUBJECT: Purchase Offer

Dear Mr. @$%&" &@#€()&%,

I am prepared to offer you a one-time non-negotiable offer of $X USD to purchase and transfer ownership of the hippressurecooking.com domain back to me, the original creator and registrant of the domain name.

You have until Friday October 12th, 5:00pm (CT) to respond and accept this offer. After receipt of a valid domain transfer authorization code, I will send payment to your email, [email protected] via Paypal.

Should you refuse this offer or fail to respond, I will pursue legal and lawful remedy. A legal team specialized in Internet Law have advised that my common law establishment of the "hip pressure cooking" trademark will bring success in a legal action against you.

As I mentioned when I called you, earlier this week, I hope to resolve this situation quickly and amicably.

Thank you,

Laura

He responded instantly.

So now the domain is back in our possession! I’m in the process of re-tying all of the spaghetti codes, numbers, and connections together to get it up and running again.

You helped.

I can’t say enough about the strength I received to keep going from your outpouring of support. This is a crime that is completely humiliates the original domain owner (me).  I was physically ill from the stress of the situation for several days after the theft.

This, is how much you helped.

What you see above are two days of regular visits to the website.  Then, when the domain was stolen and people began to visit thru the temporary location. That spike is all you!  Thousands of people saw your shares, re-tweets and re-pins this post and continued to share, re-tweet and pin them.

That peak gave me the strength and resolve and push the “send” button of the email that ultimately recuperated the domain.

Your clicks really made a difference.  

Thank you.

The creepy bad guys in the world are vastly outnumbered  by the good-  did he really have a chance against thousands of people who can swing a 10lb pressure cooker?!?!

Ciao e Grazie,

L

P.S.  No need to change any changes you have made.  I will try make it so the website will work on both hip-cooking.com and hippressurecooking.com – though there is a pretty bad klooge in place now.