A business owner we know was surprised to discover that when he typed in his web site address, a competitor's site appeared.

He asked me how it was possible that a competitor could 'hijack' his web site.

I did a little checking and discovered that what the competitor had done was perfectly legal.

See, the business owner had let his domain name expire. And the competitor had used a 'domain name backorder' service to grab the name. So when the owner didn't renew, the domain name was automatically registered to the competitor - who then pointed the name to his existing site.

How is it possible that the owner of the domain name didn't know it was about to expire?

Simple, he had changed his email address and forgot to update contact info for his domain name account. The renewal notices went to the old email address and were never checked.

There are two lessons here. First, if you own a domain name used in your business, don't let it expire.

And second, if a domain name you want is registered to someone else, consider using a backorder service to grab that domain if the current owner lets it expire. This happens often, especially in cases where domain names are registered but not in use.

Whatever you do, don't let a competitor hijack your customers because you didn't renew an important domain name.