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Then DO NOT use any websites that offer to do domain lookups for you to look to see if the domain is available. Just type the url in directly in the browser, or use a program that can do what is called a "whois" for you. (The Network Utility app that comes standard on the Macintosh will do this for you. On Windows the program called "Sam Spade" is fairly good at this as well.)

Why?

In recent years a huge scam called (by some) "domain kiting" has really taken off. Basically, spammers and their ilk are using the 5-day money-back requirement of all domain name purchases to automatically buy up 30+ million domains a year esssentially for free. And where are they getting the suggestions for these domain names their computer programs are automatically buying up? You guessed it. Apparently some websites are feeding the domain names you're looking up into these programs, which buy them … and then you have to buy the domain from them at a much higher price.

So keep your domain names to yourself, until the very last minute. FYI.