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GoDaddy Holds Domains Hostage
saikou writes "There were previous reports of GoDaddy, one of the biggest domain name registrars, attacking Bittorrent sites with frivolous interpretation of their own Terms of Service (that story was resolved), and now similar events unfold with clients of one of Russian domain registrars Majordomo.ru -- GoDaddy has informed them that all 1399 client domains are now blocked (story in Russian) due to 'many of your domain names were
listed in the Spamhaus.org blacklist or were resolving to a name server
or IP address listed in the Spamhaus.org blacklist' with a demand of a neat '$199 non-refundable
administration fee to the credit card on file for your account for each
domain name you wish to reactivate' or $50 for each domain to be transferred out into another registrar.
I am all for fighting spam, but given how unreliable spam black-lists are such actions simply damage the internet. Instead of affecting people that use spam lists to control the inflow of mail to some degree, all users are effectively forced to be black-list clients.
Now all one needs to shut down a site is a few reports of spamming, and the domain (or even better, all domains of a given small registrar) will be suspended."
SpamHaus is one of the most conscientious, well-organized, ethical and reliable lists around. Their SBL-XBL list is nothing short of essential in weighting ham and spam. I don't rely upon RBL information alone when weighting ham and spam, but if I did, I'd use spamhaus and nothing else. I'd agree with poster that RBLs are not all that great a single measure and YMMV, but don't spread FUD about spamhaus. They're great.
Can I bum a sig? I left mine at the office.
The summary is really unclear (I'm a native Russian speaker, BTW).
Majordomo uses GoDaddy for international domain registrations for some of their clients. GoDaddy has blocked 1399 accounts of Majordomo clients because of spam suspicions.
Majordomo has nothing to do with this extortion scam.
This happened to me with 10 domains. They held me hostage unless I paid some ridiculous amount.
They claimed we were spamming AOL domains, and we were not! It was a third party. They wouldn't even send me a copy of the spam emails. They would not listen to reason, or anything. It was the worst feeling being held hostage like that.
I didn't have lawyers to help me (couldn't afford them). You were lucky.
Godaddy is a scam, and an extortionist. I hope this story spreads all over the internet.
Since the parent comment was written by an anonymous poster, I would like to add that one of our customers was put in the same situation by GoDaddy. His domain was used in a "joe job" (that is, someone sent out a spam with nonexistent addresses from his domain as the From: header in their spam emails.) He called us (his web hosting provider), furious, wanting to know why his domain name was down. We had received spam complaints as well, but since the spams were not from him and were not advertising his product (he runs a legitimate business that does not use email marketing), we did not shut him down. However, when running a quick WHOIS check on his domain, I noticed that GoDaddy had set his name servers to NS1/NS2.SUSPENDED-FOR-SPAM-AND-ABUSE.COM. This was well over a year ago and since then, I have urged all of our customers to switch away from GoDaddy. Some of our customers have responded, "But I don't spam anything!" Of course you don't. It doesn't matter. If any spammer sends out spam with your domain as the From address, even if you had nothing to do with that spam, and it gets reported to GoDaddy, your domain is toast.
For what it's worth, we use eNom and have never had any problems with them. If you host more than a few domain names, get an eNom reseller account (many providers offer them for free) and pay the same price as GoDaddy. I recommend them highly; we have several hundred domains with them right now.
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Lindsay Ashford, a promient memeber of the Paedophile community was once registered with GoDaddy until they started to yank his chain and play games with him using Section Seven of their Domain Registration Agreement--specifically the bit about morally objectionable activities. Lindsay was given 24 hours in which to move the site (which he began to do) only to be informed via email the change over was blocked from GoDaddy's end without explaination. The strange thing is while there was never any child porn or illegal content on puellula.comand GoDaddy never explained their actions, the site was also home to many racists and extremists hate sites that were apparently never a problem. It finally took a complaint from Lindsay to ICAAN before the domains were finally restored to him!
GoDaddy is run by people who see no evil in groups such as: Skinheads, Hammerskins, Aryan Nations, White Camelia Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Ku Klux Klan all whom were still registered with GoDaddy as of roughly this time last year. Given the legal wrangling it took to get the company to turn over the domain names to their proper owners, why would anyone be surprised when they decide to dip into the extortion racket?
Do yourself a favor and find a domain register who is willing to take care of their customers and isn't run by a bunch of racists who think we haven't done enough torture on the Guantanamo Bay prisioners!
--I*Love*Green*Olives
There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls. --George Carlin