Domain name front running.

ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC ) has issued an advisory on a process known as Domain Name Front Running. It's stealing one's domain name from a certain parties search queries and registering the domain even before the original party (searcher) can register it.

This Advisory considers the opportunity for a party with some form of insider information to track an Internet user’s preference for registering a domain name and preemptively register that name. This type of activity has been called domain name grabbing and preemptive registration in other contexts. SSAC compares this activity to front running in stock and commodities markets and thus calls this similar behavior domain name front running. In the domain name industry, insider information would be information gathered from the monitoring of one or more attempts by an Internet user to check the availability of a domain name. Several possible incentives have been suggested to SSAC as motivations to engage in domain name front running. One possibility is that a domain name that is of interest to one or more Internet users has potential for domain name monetization1. A second possibility
is that a domain of interest to an Internet user may have a commodity value in a secondary (resale) market; in particular, the domain name front runner might seek to sell the domain name registration to the party whose queries prompted the preemptive registration of that domain name.

I myself looks in a weekly basis what is a good and profitable domain. Maybe i can stumble to some domain that can generate money. However, with advisory update, ICANN still don't have any hard evidence pinpointing parties about the matter.

But, i found this forum that has some history of.

Forum Link: "I Smell A Rat".