A relative let my wife's family .com domain name expire. Apart from that being annoying in itself, the domain now redirects to random spam blogs and is owned by someone with almost 5000 other domains according to DomainTools. They also want a fortune to return it.The family name is pretty unusual and completely unrelated to the spam. So how did they manage to snap the domain name up so quickly and what value is it to them?
Why/How do expired domain names get bought so quickly?
domains
Why/How do expired domain names get  bought so quickly?They also want a fortune to return it. - That's domain speculation and that's why.How do enterprising domain squatters know which domains to buy? There are a variety of traffic ranking sites (including Alexa and SEOmoz's Open Site Explorer) which allow domain squatters to determine which domain names may be worth acquiring (in the case of common names, the domain is probably worth acquiring if only to ransom it).Squatters can see when a domain will expire by reviewing WHOIS data - there are even sites which broadcast expiring domains after aggregating ranking and WHOIS data.