Slashdot Mirror
Taking Domain Control Back from the Registrar?
Patrick Clinger asks: "I run a large community Web site, and today I woke up to find that one of my domain names (proboards21.com) was disabled by my unnamed registrar -- my name servers were changed to NS1/NS2.SUSPENDED-FOR.SPAM-AND-ABUSE.COM and I no longer have access to that domain in my control panel. I am in no way involved in any spam activities, and the registration for my domain expires in 2007. I would expect at least a courtesy call or an email letting me know what happened, but neither was provided by the unnamed registrar. What can you do when suddenly a registrar goes off and takes control of your domain when there was no violation of your agreement with them? What is to prevent any registrar from taking over any domain when they feel like it? Right now my domain is in limbo, waiting for them to hopefully restore it to the correct name servers."
Everyone buys the cheapest PC they can get, want the cheapest software on the market, goes to WalMart and buys $15.99 pair of basketball shoes and $20 stereo system, cheapest domains they can find... ...and people still complain about the labor outsourced to India and scrappy cheap vendors giving crappy service.
i would do a domain transfer to another registrar, taking all your domain names with you. on the other hand i have had no troubles whatsoever with said "unnamed registrar". have you tried calling their tech support line?
My registrar just went out of business. Of course before they did, mysteriously, all of the contact information -- except billing -- was switched to them. And so I've got a couple of stranded domains that I can't move anywhere, at any price.
Proving "ownership" is turning out to be harder than expected.
Get off my lawn.
ICANN?
.com, so Verisign?
It's a
The courts?
I'm not sure there is anything you can do other than ask them to reinstate the domains unless you want to take this to court but that takes money and perhaps even more importantly, time. I'm not even sure suing them would get the results you want. It depends on what you agreed to when you registered the domain. It's vitally important to read all the fine print when making a business arrangement (like registering a domain). I think the rights and responsibilities outlined in the contract should be the prime factor when choosing a register, not price. All of that aside, a registrar suspending a domain for 'abuse', real or imagined, is ridiculous.
Write their support an email telling them you'll be contacting the Better Business Bureau if you do not hear from them with 24 hours. It works.
http://www.icann.org/faq/
You could bitch about it on slashdot. That can only turn out well.
Liek Ophix suggested above, I myself haven't had any problems with said registrar, but note that they keep phone lines open for their registrants so you can sort this out, and my experience is that they're more than willing to bend over backwards for their registrants.
This sig no verb.
I've heard both good and bad stories about Godaddy, so I've stayed away, they seem to be cheapest price, but I didnt want to take a chance.
Personally, I'd send a certified letter from a lawyer, and work with them. But you did allow one of your sites to be used for spam relay, even if by mistake. Work it out, if not, get fuckoffgodaddy.com, and tell the world. Bad reputation can cause lots of damages.
Publicize it on Slashdot.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
How about don't let your webhost register domains for you, and don't give your webhost administrative contact status in your domain? Do it yourself at a registrar that respects your rights, like GANDI.
I had something similar happen. I registered a domain with a fly-by-night registrar. They took the money and closed down. I actually managed to find his home phone #. His mother (?) answered and actually said that the guy just got out of jail again.
Anyway, I explained this to the registrar upstream from the scam company, and the upstream registrar unlocked it for me, without having to have any communications with the jailbird. My money was lost, but I was able to move the domain elsewhere.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Did you read this?
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
Long story short, call, talk to their manager, then their manager. Repeat as needed as high up the chain as you need to go to get them to listen to you.
either this was fixed right quick, or this person has done an intentional salshdotting of their own site to rev subscriptions.
seems to be working fine now. 7pm PST 2/25
This comment, while true, doesn't help anyone in the least. Even if it were on topic, it fails to provide any insight into the off-topic scenario that it raises.
Am I the only one scratching my head and wondering whether this story is a clever spam for the guy's web site. The one he posted about is yet another domain name, not the main one he is directing us to in his oh-so-convenient link.
https://www.gandi.net/contract.en.txt
"The Client owns the Domain Name registered. Gandi simply acts on the Client's behalf."
No, I'm not affiliated with Gandi, but I do use them for my registration services. They're the only company who makes such a statement in their contract (AFAIK).
What can you do when suddenly a registrar goes off and takes control of your domain when there was no violation of your agreement with them?
You see, in our society, when people violate contracts we have something called a court system where you can explain to a nice man that the other person isn't doing what they promised they would do.
The nice man can even force the other person to do what they promised, and give you money to make up for it.
Sheesh. Did you even make it out of kindergarden?
I must say that I'm very surprised by this response. I've had an extraordinarily positive experience with them, particularly BECAUSE of their anti-spam policy. They are very serious about complaints, but when I filed one, were definitely very careful about not arbitrarily shutting the spammer down just because *I said* they were a spammer. They contacted the spammer first, went back and forth with them and myself for a few days, and then shut them down when they would not stop.
Based on my experience from the other side of the equation, you should have been contacted first. I'm surprised that you weren't. I would suggest contacting the President, Bob Parsons' office. When I called, I was told that he kept his number fairly easy to access because he prefers to be more hands-on and accessible to customers. I'm sure that he doesn't take the calls personally (I got voicemail when I called), but was told later that the issue had been referred by him personally to the abuse dept manager, who called me back.
The " Office of The President" number is (480) 505-8828, and the e-mail address is president@godaddy.com. Give 'em a call, and a chance. Everyone has given some variation of "you get what you pay for", but this customer has gotten far more than that in the past.
While I doubt it's the case of the person in the article, it does make a joe-job(spammer pretending to be you) a lot more threatening...
Because if you do, these addresses may be used to fake from headers for the MyDoom worm, or other spam, etc. Maybe a lot of it went to a group of people who got together and in retaliation, bugged GoDaddy a lot, causing them to suspend the account (without properly investigating to see if it actually ORIGINATED from your domain).
Hell, this may even be the case if you don't let people have email addresses at your domain. Nothing's stopping spammers from making it look like stuff comes from admin@proboardz21.com or billybob or whatever, so long as the payload still generates sales for the right person.
Meanwhile it makes you (or your service providers) look like the most obvious source of ill will.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Example
Example
Example
My guess is that complaints about the spammer went to GoDaddy rather than you. Did you receive complaints? Do you, I hope, have an abuse@proboards21.com address set up...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I got more details from GoDaddy as I talked to their abuse department on the phone. This is what they told me:
/.'s registrar disables their domain by changing their name servers.
1) Some person (a person I do not know) sent out an email to a bunch of people with their newsletter, and included a link to their message board that was hosted by ProBoards.
2) Another person received a copy of that email, and took it as spam (it may have been -- although the email looks like a newsletter).
3) That person SpamCop report, and contacted GoDaddy regarding it.
4) I deleted that message board account about 2 days prior to GoDaddy disabling my domain name.
5) GoDaddy disabled the domain because it was "associated" with spam.
Now let me make this clear if you don't understand it: Some person out there on the Internet sent an email to another person out there on the Internet and because that email mentioned my domain name in the body of it, my domain was disabled for being associated with spam.
The email did NOT originate from my servers, it was not sent by me or a member of my staff. It is just like if I opened up my mail program and sent an email to a hundred people mentioning somewhere in the email "slashdot.org" and then
To top the entire situation off, GoDaddy charged me a $250 fee to get my domain name back! I am now looking to transfer my domain names to a new registrar, so time to start looking - and time to start considering legal action.
Actually, there's a lot stopping spammers from making it look like stuff comes from your domain. THey could make it look that way to a naive end-user, but the envelope portion would show that the server responsible for processing the offending message had nothing to do with the domain in the From: address.
I took a look, they haven't put the domain on registrar-lock.
Just transfer the domain to another registrar - you won't lose anything other than a registrar you aren't happy with (i.e. the existing time on the registration is extended by a year).
(Shameless plug: We offer domain name registration for $10.95/year.)
SSL Certificate
GoDaddy Registration page says All public domain registrations are registered in YOUR NAME not ours.
GoDaddy could get around this by claiming that its WHOIS database is copyrighted and thus that registrations are not "public domain" registrations.
What a bummer - I'd switch fast as I could too, as others here have said; but I'd take at least a day and find out who is good in this business, who guarantees you 'own' your domain name, etc. It's not always the cheapest who are best and safest, and it's not always the most expensive either (VeriSlime).
GANDI's French, but I spent a long time with a friend going over user policies and prices. GANDI has some of the strongest protections for the user (it's hard for GANDI to do things for your domain and easy for you to transfer it), and is still one of the cheaper ones -- though I think godaddy is still the cheapest.
Whatever you do, avoid Verisign like the plague.
May we never see th
1. I set up a DNS server 2. Transferred ALL domains to www.register.com 3. I changed all the DNS records for those domains to my DNS server. Cheap, easy and if you ever want a MX change or whatever, you don't have to wait ages for you provider to change and replicate. Not ment as advertisement for register, there are many like them, but that is what I did 2 years ago and I never want to go back.
A problem cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created it.
The BBB doesn't do jack. I've tried, but the BBB has no authority whatsoever; it's just a list of companies that *some* consumers are unhappy with, and it seems most companies reported to the BBB simply shakes it off, just like water on a goose.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Doing a whois of proboards21.com at whois.internic.net:
Domain Name: PROBOARDS21.COM
Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: NS.PROBOARDS.COM
Name Server: NS4.PROBOARDS.COM
Status: ACTIVE
Updated Date: 25-feb-2004
Creation Date: 17-mar-2003
Expiration Date: 17-mar-2007
So he *should* be able to transfer it away, so long as godaddy.com doesn't specifically block the transfer...
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
AMEN. I reported a couple of companies to the BBB, got nothing for my troubles and ... wait for it ...
If you go to the BBB site and look up the companies to see if they have any complaints against them, THEY DO NOT SHOW UP WITH ANY COMPLAINTS! Glad to know my voice and effort was wasted.
Knightfall
ive been using 123reg.co.uk/.com for a few months and i havent had any problems with them. also they're cheap.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
I resolved a dispute like this with my hosting company over the phone.
I had designed a single page for a customer within a regional business district website I'd put together a few years ago. The business was a small, independent children's clothing and toy store with the word "Kiddie" in the name, and some whack job prankster had sent out some kind of inane spam that referenced the page for this store, along with a handful of other innocent pages on the web, advertising it as a child pornography site. Someone forwarded the spam to my hosting company and they locked the directory down without even looking at the page to see what the fuss was about.
It was a stupid, infantile prank some idiot teenager had pulled, and I had to spend at least a half-hour on the phone with my hosting company begging a woman who barely spoke English to change the permissions on the directory. I made it really clear to her how ridiculous is was for them to shut that directory down without at least looking at the page to make sure that it really was what the spam said it was, and that the whole situation was making me seriously rethink my use of the company's services. She seemed to understand, and it hasn't happened since.
It looks to me like there are a few trolls out there who, like John the Bastard in Much Ado About Nothing, delight in spreading the seeds of mistrust and chaos wherever they can. They send out spam email with no purpose other than to embroil innocent website owners in disputes with their host companies. They enjoy the feeling that they get, apparently, from causing hard-working and honest people to have to waste their time getting needless and pointless problems straightened out. They're almost worse than spammers, because at least spammers have personal financial gain as their motivation. These idiot pranksters have as their motivation only the satisfaction of perpetrating evil on others, for whatever that's worth to them. They're like social vandals. They have no statement to make other than, "Ha ha, you're conducting your affairs honestly and I'm not."
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
I've used them for going on four years and they are fantastic! 12 Euros/about US$10 for a 1-year .com registration.
http://www.gandi.net
Go Daddy's Spam and Abuse Department received spam complaints regarding proboards21.com and began investigating the situation. The Go Daddy Spam and Abuse team sent multiple warnings to the Administrative and Technical contact email addresses, which are the email addresses that ICANN requires be accurate. Email warnings sent to both contact addresses were rejected by the customer's mail server with a "did not like recipient" error. This, in an of itself, can be a big problem. Our abuse department also attempts to send warnings to the fax number of domains under investigation as this is also a traceable form of communication. This customer did not provide a fax contact number for his domain name. Many spammers register "disposable" or "throw away" domain names with the intention of utilizing these domain names to distribute their material until they get caught. Often times, these individuals do not provide valid contact information, and do not respond to any warnings that are sent. The name servers were re-directed as an alternative to simply canceling the domain registration outright. Re-directing the domain's name servers is not as permanent or as drastic as canceling the domain name. Taking this action allows Go Daddy to work with the customer to resolve the immediate problem, and avoid any future problems. As other Slashdot readers have already pointed out in their comments regarding this post, if you are going to provide a free service to the Internet public, it is crucial that you are able to keep a tight reign on these individuals. This is especially important when these individuals are essentially out there using your domain name. Our Abuse team has discussed this situation with the customer and explained the related, options, fees, and policies involved. The customer has ensured Go Daddy that his users will abide by Go Daddy's anti-spam policy from this point forward and has agreed to enforce this policy by canceling the service he provides to any users that violate this policy in the future. We are not out to shut down legitimate customers, nor are we out to charge fees for no reason. GoDaddy is trying to do our part to stop spam and network abuse, while at the same time, helping legitimate businesses and individuals with their online needs. If you have any questions about our spam policies/procedures, please see our site at https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/no_spam.asp Thank you, Office of the President GoDaddy.com