B of A snaps up $EXECNAMEsucks domains prior to Wikileaks blowout

Bank of America has started snapping up "sucks" and "blows" domains for its executives in seeming preparation for the coming Wikileaks dirty-little-secrets-haemorrhage. In a stunning tribute to the financial acumen of BofA's C-suite, they seem to have missed the fact that total combinations of $FIRSTNAME/INITIAL + $LASTNAME + [blows|sucks|crook|thief|fraudster].[com|net|org|ws|info|cc|ca|ch|whatever] multiplied by, say, $5/domain/year exceeds the total capital reserves of the bank.

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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mdh

At least they’re not spending that time foreclosing on former customers who have paid their debts.
slk

Wow, hopefully this will finally bankrupt those assholes… unless Obama gives them more of our tax-money.
nixiebunny

And they may have completely ignored the
.
market segment.

This could take light-years of money to patch!
jjomolloy

Not going to stop anyone setting up a tumblr, posterous or wordpress site though…
Frentick

We live in interesting times.
knoxblox

Don’t worry, they’ll pass the savings (added fees) on to the customer.
johnnyaction

Don’t forget punctuation marks and numbers..

That adds a lot more po.ssib1li.ties

They probably have boilerplate takedown notices ready to go too..

Hi boa flunky reading this article!
- knoxblox
  
  Yes, flunkies suck, too.
  
  You guys have no excuse. There are many more ways to feed your family that are more helpful to society than what you’re doing for the companies like BoA, and you know it.
pentomino

Don’t forget that “sucks” and “blows” are transitive verbs, and can be combined with any number of direct objects.

How many mammals can you name?
Altidude

Don’t forget the executives that both suck AND blow.
(It is physically possible.)

BofAsucksANDblows.com
- lolbrandon
  
  Extremely disappointed that URL doesn’t work. Can someone fix that?
mdh

I can think of insults several orders of magnitude larger than those.
seyo

I am THIS CLOSE to closing my accounts with BoA. What is a Boing Boing approved bank? Seriously. I’m curious. Don’t they ALL suck/blow? Maybe some less than BoA… I do hate them though.
- Anonymous
  
  Seyo: Not that I’m an official BB representative here (’cause I’m not!) but credit unions are really the way to go. As a member, you have partial ownership in the union, and generally loan rates/interest/etc. are just as competitive if not more so than ordinary banks.
  
  If you don’t have a credit union in your area, or you have a corporately owned one like CommunityAmerica (bleh!) you might look into a smaller local or regional bank. If it’s based in or near your hometown all the better. Just try to balance between small enough to know what they’re up to and large enough to serve your needs (because having a bank who has ONE branch and ONE ATM waaaaaay on the other side of town sucks, right?)
  
  Hope this helped!
- slk
  
  Go with a local bank or credit union. Large national banks are rather hideous.
- knodi
  
  I use USAA for just about everything. They’re great, they reimburse you for any ATM access fees, I have free checking, and they even called me out of the blue once to say “I see you changed the address on your account. Does that mean you moved? Great! Our records show you’re in a safer neighborhood now, so we’re lowering your car insurance, and retroactively refunding the difference based on your move-in date”. They even gave me $33 a week ago, just because it’s company policy to give a percentage of profits directly to customers. And their website and mobile banking suite is pretty top notch (depositing checks via webcam blows my mind).
- The Life Of Bryan
  
  As SLK said, go with a credit union. Conceptually, theyâ€™re essentially non-profit S&Ls. I have accounts with two of them, and the difference in their behavior and mentality compared to â€œnormalâ€ banks is striking.
- Anonymous
  
  You are kidding, right?
  
  You seriously haven’t closed any business with BOA after learning they are forging documents, bid-rigging muni bonds, illegally breaking into people’s homes…..what the f*** does it take for you people to move your F***ing money???
ocschwar

How are they going to stop Wikipedia from openning entries on their executives?
Anonymous

Ah yes, but they don’t have http://www.isapenis.com now do they? Bwahahahaha. Just waiting for a specific BofA person to be identified and then suspect we’ll see something like our lovely tribute to the head of BP: http://tonyhayward.isapenis.com/ :-)
Ivan R.

They are as tragic as sad, neglected teenage bullies.

I am shocked by the acceptance of banks and more importantly their way of business by citizens of our planet.

My theory is, that if all law enforcing organisations in the world stopped existing for just one hour – there would be no more banks in this world.
- seyo
  
  No they’re not. They’re criminals. Enough with this sympathetic and compassionate crap. Equating them with bullies is ridiculous. They ruin people’s lives while stuffing their own pockets. This has nothing to do with making fun of nerds and/or stealing lunch money.
  - Ivan R.
    
    Agree with you on this. Thought the other part of my comment showed that pretty clear.
Anonymous

bofaatemyballs.com?
Anonymous

I’m staying with BofA, thanks. I have held three bank accounts with them for more than ten years now, and never had any problems. They have never charged me a fee for anything, their branches are everywhere, and when I’ve needed help, they’ve given it.
Antinous / Moderator

BankOfAmericaEatsPoo.com is available. Operators are standing by.
Johnny Bionic

Smart move actually. Chase Bank ignored a threat by a pissed off customer a few years back to do the same, and now Chase-Sucks.com has become an epicenter for anti-Chase bank rhetoric and they apparently get a lot of traffic from people looking for Chase bank’s website. Saw a story about it on the EFF site and it seems to have started the trend of the [namehere]Sucks websites. Interesting backstory to it I guess.
Anonymous

Yep, local credit unions are the way to go, though I linked my CU account with an ING online account so that I can get all my billpay stuff taken care of internationally AND gain interest on my checking. Love my credit union, and they love me. ING is pretty good, too.
Anonymous

I think they forgot BrianMoynihanIsAscumBagAssholeShitEatingNimrod.com, among others…
Anonymous

They missed one:

http://www.bankofamericacanfelchme.com/
dr

seyo, it is not always that easy to close an account. While I’ve never opened an account with BoA, I currently have several accounts with them (including my mortgage), thanks to their habit of eating other financial institutions. Moving a mortgage requires a complete refinance, which is a hefty amount of work and expense. In my case, the probability and severity of a BoA snafu (BoaFu?) does not outweigh the cost and effort of moving.
IronEdithKidd

I can think of hundreds of domain names that would demean BoA without using “sucks” or “blows”.

Unimaginative bankster twits are unimaginative.
SamSam

That’s pretty cute, but the sum of reasonable possibilities isn’t THAT huge.

I could imagine they’d do this for their 50 most prominent executives. Really, who knows who the hell #51 in BoA, the vice-co-under-director of technological media integrations is?

So, total combinations of $FIRSTNAME/INITIAL + $LASTNAME = 100.

Throw an optional middle name in there, as they are doing, $FIRSTNAME/INITIAL + $M? $LASTNAME = 200

Up to two optional periods, $FIRSTNAME/INITIAL + .? + $M? + .? + $LASTNAME = 800

Add in your verbs, plus four others that you didn’t think of:

$FIRSTNAME/INITIAL + .? + $M? + .? + $LASTNAME + [blows|sucks|crook|thief|fraudster|wanks|smells|enjoys-poop|murdered-a-hooker] = 7200

Add the 4 most reasonable TLDs, plus a couple others:

$FIRSTNAME/INITIAL + .? + $M? + .? + $LASTNAME + [blows|sucks|crook|thief|fraudster|wanks|smells|enjoys-poop].[com|net|org|info|us|tv] = 43,200

Multiply that by $5 each, you get $216,000.

A mere 0.00009% of its annual $2.3 billion marketing budget. An accounting error.
- n1gh75h4d3
  
  I believe you have an error of some kind, likely forgetting the second step of producing a percentage, seeing as your math was sound until you got to your percentage, as (216 000 / 2 300 000 000) * 100 = 0.00939130435
  sing your method, 3 is .6% of 5
  Just remember to multiply by 100 when making percentages. Thanks.
Anonymous

+1 for USAA as a bank. They are top notch. Of course you need a connection to the military. I have an account via my wife who’s father was in Navy. If you are in the Seattle area, BECU is generally good.
Anonymous

This may seem like a stupid question, but my mortgage is through these yahoos since they bought it from Countrywide. Is it even possible to get a mortgage moved, or am I stuck with them to the bitter end?
forteller

Great website with info and help to find a better/local bank or credit union: http://moveyourmoney.info/
Anonymous

SO if BoA won’t process transactions that are going to Wikileaks, what about, say, USAA? inquiring minds and all that…
Mazoola

That algorithm could be infringing — if the guys at Better Off Ted filed for a process patent: Almost certainly NSFW description of insult-generating formula.