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Kochi boy sold website to Zuckerberg for $700

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CIOL When FB approached a kochi boy

Amal Augustine, an engineering student bought a domain and sold to the sixth richest person in the world, Mark Zuckerberg. Kochi-based Amal sold 'maxchanzuckerberg.org' to ICONIQCAPITAL - representatives who handle Zuckerberg's finances - for $700.

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Cyber Squatting, where people often invest in domains that they think will of be a much higher value in the future and they make a huge profit on the initial investment by selling. Amal has been following this practice - cybersquatting - for a long period; however, this is the first time that he received an exceptional deal.

FB approached Augustine for the domain name registered by him as it was the short form of Maxime Chan-Zuckerberg, the name of FB founder Mark Zuckerberg's daughter.

CIOL When fb approached a kochi boy
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"I have registered quite a few domain names and I have been doing it for some time. I registered this domain name when their baby was born last December," said Amal, a student of KMEA engineering college.

Amal, who bought the domain and effectively blocked someone from buying it, sat on it till he was sent a request for purchase. When FB approached Amal, the email request came as a casual email from GoDaddy, an internet domain registrar, asking whether he would be willing to sell the domain name by the end of last month and for how much. He agreed and asked for a decent sum of $700.

"When the letter came officially mentioning the change of registration, I noticed the FB letterhead. But since it's not legal to negotiate, I just went ahead and closed the deal in seven days," he said. Amal received the email was from Sara Chapel, manager of Iconic Capital.

The Amal-Zuckerberg deal has been the most interesting case of cybersquatting that took place in the state so far, say cyber experts. "Internet squatting is not an illegal process. People register domains of popular names, brands or organizations and later bargain with the owners and eventually sell it back to make money," said Mahesh C, faculty in the department of computer science and engineering, FISAT.

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