GoDaddy Goes Down, Anonymous Claims Responsibility

An anonymous reader writes "A member of the Anonymous hacktivist group appears to have taken down GoDaddy with a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). The widespread issue seems to be affecting countless websites and services around the world, although not for everyone. Godaddy.com is down, but so are some of the site's DNS servers, which means GoDaddy hosted e-mail accounts are down as well, and lots more. It's currently unclear if the servers are being unresponsive or if they are completely offline. Either way, the result is that if your DNS is hosted on GoDaddy, your site may also look as if it is down, because it cannot resolve."

Comments

This is big

[Terry Pearson]

I was just noticing the large number of sites that are down. I hope it gets resolved soon!

Re:This is big

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they lose a lot of business from it. GoDaddy is an aweful company.

Re:This is big

[Riddler Sensei]

I hope it gets resolved soon!

*bah dum tish*?

Re:This is big

[houstonbofh]

There has also been a huge reduction is spam and crap e-mail on technical mailing lists. So I am kinda mixed on how soon I want them to fix it.

Re:This is big

[Hentes]

There's not much hope, as now Slashdot have also joined the attack.

Re:This is big

[Anonymous Coward]

If you sleep with a whore, you can not complain if you get syphilis.

Re:This is big

[theArtificial]

they may be aweful, but the hosted email has been damn decent for the 4+ years I've been with them. I've always sort of snickered at the shit anonymous did, but now their vendetta against a big company fucks us little guys too.

Please don't misconstrue this as support for Anonymous' actions. You seem to forget that SOPA would fuck the little guys, too. Perhaps you've forgotten who supported that legislation, and why Wikipedia and many others (including myself, a customer for over 10 years) have left GoDaddy.

Re:This is big

[NSN A392-99-964-5927]

What if I use a latex condom?

Use a C4 condom instead insert detonator and you will get the bang of your life.

You think this is a Game?

[Bryansix]

Now you jerk faces are affecting actual Interstate commerce on a massive scale. My own website is down. If you didn't get the attention of the FBI before, you have it now.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[i286NiNJA]

Hate to blame the victim but why on earth are you using godaddy who supports anyone having the ability to take your website down?

Re:You think this is a Game?

[Bryansix]

What information are you basing this one? GoDaddy itself does not appear down. This appears to be a DNS exploit. That would put .... oh I don't know... every single host on earth at risk.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[Aqualung812]

His point is that GoDaddy supported SOPA, which allowed companies to shut down websites on a whim.

If you continued to support GoDaddy after learning about this, then it is assumed you're fine with people's websites being shutdown for no good reason.

Therefore, why are you upset now?

You're the roofer on the Death Star. You knew the risks.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[h4rr4r]

You could host your own dns, like a big boy.

This is what happens when you push everything out into the cloud. Somedays it rains and there ain't shit you can do about it.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[i286NiNJA]

You misunderstand. Godaddy supported SOPA. Essentially they support anyone claiming to be a content owner taking your site down for infringement while the claim is investigated. Why not go with a better cheaper provider anyhow?

Re:You think this is a Game?

[h4rr4r]

Citation needed

Perhaps a link to a document on their web site :)

Re:You think this is a Game?

[Bryansix]

You are right, I could. I don't sit on mutiple ISPs in a SAS70 rated datacenter with diverse physical location redundancy and power backup. So I let them do it. It would be trivial for me to move my DNS records. That totally misses the point. The hacking is causing loss of productivity. I know this is funny to you but for the people affected it is a giant waste of time and nothing will be accomplished by it.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[achbed]

On top of that, you didn't read the TOS from GoDaddy. That allows *them* to turn your site off on a whim without prior notice. This might just be the hackers turning on the built-in kill switch for every GoDaddy site simultaneously.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[h4rr4r]

You don't, but if you did your DNS would still work.

I think it is bad that this happened, but this is what you get whenever you put your eggs in one basket.

It is not funny to me, other than finding out what companies my company does business with that we clearly should not be since they let godaddy host their DNS.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[sohmc]

I highly doubt that they didn't know the details of the bill. The bill was available via Thomas and it's broad strokes were known for quite some time.

GoDaddy wanted to placate the MPAA/RIAA/etc because it was a business decision. Once they realized that they had a massive exodus of customers, they made the business decision to reverse their stance.

Their decision had little to do with knowing the bill. Their decision was made because it was the fiscally responsible thing to do. They probably didn't predict that the fallout would be as drastic as it was.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[i286NiNJA]

So since people stopped caring about SOPA it's not a big deal now? It's getting pushed through piecemeal. I'm gonna laugh when your precious website can't be reliably hosted anywhere in the USA.

Lesson is: Don't do important business with losers.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[Aqualung812]

So, you thought giving your domain name to a bunch of clowns that support laws that they don't understand was a good plan?

Doesn't seem to be working out good.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[Cinder6]

Well, it explains why my podcast app didn't update my favorite podcast--just ran a whois to confirm that they're hosted on GoDaddy.

What's obnoxious about something like this is that the attack isn't likely to get the attention of the general public. Most people will see their favorite site is down, say "Aw, shucks," and check again later. The news likely won't even mention this, what with election season going on and giving them better yellow journalism fodder. The people who will know the reason why some of their favorite sites are down are like those here on Slashdot: The same people that already dislike GoDaddy.

I'm not saying that protest is a bad thing--far from it. But ineffective protest is. All this attack accomplishes is to hurt the little guy--the people who use GoDaddy.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe GoDaddy's customers will all jump ship because of this. I doubt it, though.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[Bryansix]

Considering their website stayed up during the whole attack, your joke fails. http://support.godaddy.com/godaddy/statement-about-sopa/

Re:You think this is a Game?

[MachDelta]

You're the roofer on the Death Star.

B-but... it's a sphere? How? Where... does the roof? I... i'm so confused.... Shouldn't he also be the, uh, waller... and flooring guy...? My childhood... crumbling... Nnooooooooooooo!

Oh well, at least I still have Clerks...

Re:You think this is a Game?

[cjjjer]

And how in your brain is Anonymous forcefully taking down websites based on their ideals any different than the Gov. using SOPA to take down websites?

Pot meet kettle, Hey! We're both black who-da-thunk!

Re:You think this is a Game?

[Bob9113]

Their decision was made because it was the short-run profiteering thing to do.

There, fixed that for ya. The fiscally responsible thing to do is to ensure the long-run fitness of the United States and global economy.

The MPAA and RIAA are pushing for increasing the strength of their regulatory monopolies to channel a larger share of GDP into their products, which shifts us further out on the cultural supply curve. That increases units produced and per-unit price, which has the effect of increasing cultural production while reducing the per-unit cost efficiency. That would be a good thing if we were suffering from a shortage of cultural production and the economy was running strong. Since we are on the opposite side of both those balances at the moment, however, supporting that agenda to curry their favor is short-run profiteering -- not fiscal responsibility.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[InvisiBill]

His point is that GoDaddy supported SOPA, which allowed companies to shut down websites on a whim.

If you continued to support GoDaddy after learning about this, then it is assumed you're fine with people's websites being shutdown for no good reason.

Therefore, why are you upset now?

You're the roofer on the Death Star. You knew the risks.

Actually, his point is probably that GoDaddy's policies, regardless of SOPA/PIPA support, allow them to shut down websites on a whim. They've repeatedly demonstrated this by completely shutting down entire accounts when served a DMCA complaint for one site. http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/05/25/1744246/photographer-threatened-with-legal-action-after-asserting-his-copyright is one example. (Part of the reason she went crazy was that all of her sites, including one regarding special needs children, were suspended after GoDaddy received the DMCA complaint over one photo on one specific site.)

GoDaddy has made it clear that it takes very little to convince them to suspend a customer's entire account. If you choose to use GoDaddy's services, that's a risk you're taking.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[X0563511]

That might have mattered back when SOPA was still a thing people cared about.

This right there is why this stuff is so insidious. We have to be vigilant.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[i286NiNJA]

I was giving good business advice actually, most of the time when I lose money it's because I wasn't selective who I trusted. So it's my fault for losing money because I trusted a moron with business.

Also good job with the rape out of the blue.. why don't you throw in some nazis and compare me to bush while you're at it. You're like the idiot who shops at wal-mart... except with best buy prices and customer service.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[clarkkent09]

A lot of companies (and unions) supported SOPA: http://www.scribd.com/doc/76259944/SOPA-Supporters

Therefore, why are you upset now?

Do you use a MasterCard or VISA? Do you watch ABC, follow pro football or basketball, buy books published by Random House, HarperCollins or McGraw-Hill, are a paying member of any of a dozen unions, buy any products made by Revlon, Pfizer, LOreal, Sony and a hundred other companies?

According to your logic, if any of the above is true, you should not be upset if a group of random hackers shuts down your website and causes you financial harm.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[formfeed]

affecting actual Interstate commerce

I thought only websites hosted by go-daddy were affected.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[ildon]

Who is "everybody?" Godaddy.com hasn't been resolving for me since at least 1:30 PM EDT. It continues to not resolve for me now (5 PM EDT).

Re:You think this is a Game?

[leonardluen]

If i recall GoDaddy had a hand in writing the bill as well. they finally changed their stance after there was an exodus from their service over SOPA. and even then it seemed they only changed their stance because of their bottom dollar, and ultimately they still believed in it.

I pulled all my domains from GoDaddy a long time ago because of their SOPA support.

It seems anonymous is rather late to the party for this. all the SOPA stuff was many months ago.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[Okian Warrior]

What's obnoxious about something like this is that the attack isn't likely to get the attention of the general public. Most people will see their favorite site is down, say "Aw, shucks," and check again later.

"Most people" aren't the target audience here. The target audience is IT administrators who are given the task of choosing a domain hosting solution.

Domain hosting choice involves a lot of factors such as cost, customer satisfaction, down-time, and so on. If Anonymous can insert a new factor "being down due to backlash from unethical behaviour", they will have accomplished their goal.

Numerous studies show that tiny influences can have a noticeable effect on large populations. We see this all the time where human decision-making is involved - tiny influences will not sway any individual decision, but those same tiny effects have enough of an effect to be measurable in the population at large.

That's what Anonymous (or rather, the hacker with "Anonymous" in his name) is doing here - generating a new, tiny influence which might have an effect on the overall population.

They are bringing "company reputation" back into the purchase decision process.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[TCM]

I love those naive random thoughts. As if noone ever had more than one DNS server.

Google "DNS master slave setup". "Hidden primary" is another key phrase. DNS runs the Internet. It's not some toy that can't handle every imaginable setup.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[blind biker]

Once they realized that they had a massive exodus of customers, they made the business decision to reverse their stance.

GoDaddy never reversed their stance on SOPA! They basically said that they will not be so upfront with their support of the bill.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[macklin01]

It's affecting a lot more than commerce.

My cancer research website is down, too. (Only works on computers that had cached the DNS entries.) So much for inviting seminar speakers today.

I'm an academic. I set my site up years ago (before all the SOPA business) and don't have time to muck with moving my site around, hosting DNS here and content there, and the like. I barely have time to maintain content in the middle of a busy research career. I suppose I'm now supposed to be an expert on mathematical modeling + cancer + hosting my own DNS?

It's always worth keeping in mind that these things affect far more than business sites.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[BronsCon]

More accurately, it's: Don't be surprised if the armed thug you're doing business with holds you at gunpoint and robs you, or gets raided by the feds while you're there (getting you arrested at the same time).

Re:You think this is a Game?

[Lost Race]

Resolvers generally query multiple (or all) name servers for the domain simultaneously, and take whichever response comes back first. As long as one server is responding reliably, everything will work transparently for clients, though perhaps a bit slower. If that one server ever drops a packet then clients could see a long delay or outright lookup failure.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[Medievalist]

Wait, you put 1500 domains on GoDady?

And you've never bothered to develop an exit strategy?

I have no idea how to respond to that.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[skelly33]

It affects sites whose *DNS* is hosted by GoDaddy. That would make any site hosted by GoDaddy fair game... as well as any site that uses their DNS Manager, but hosts off-site.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[LodCrappo]

no, that link WAS NOT functional for a great number of folks, as was the main godaddy.com site, for several hours. It may have worked for you, but no one agrees that godaddy.com stayed up, because it did not.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[LodCrappo]

If you take your project seriously and believe your website is an important part of it, you simply must acquire the skill to make good decisions regarding it's implementation or hire an expert who can do this for you. You cannot stick your head in the sand and cry "I'm too busy, too important!" and expect any sympathy from me. Do you use that approach as an excuse for every area in which you fail to bring in proper expertise?

GoDaddy has a long track record of poor service and questionable practices the predates any SOPA business by many years. They offer nothing unique and have dozens of more reputable competitors. There is only one reason anyone uses GoDaddy: low cost.

This is your responsibility. Certainly you didn't end up using GoDaddy's services purely by random chance. A decision was made by someone, and it was made poorly. Probably someone trying to save a few bucks. It's highly unlikely that this will be the only ramification of that bad decision. It's also somewhat likely that other, similarly poor choices have been made in how your technical infrastructure is designed.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[Twinbee]

This point has been brought up before. 'Godaddy' should have known better since they're in the technology business sector. Their whole business revolves around the lifeblood of the internet. I think practically every other registrar wasn't involved with SOPA one bit.

More to the point though, Goddaddy is simply a less efficient company compared to many, and the world would be better off without them (no offense intended, since it'd be great to free up their time for more productive tasks, or simply free time for its own sake).

Re:You think this is a Game?

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Everybody agreed that godaddy.com stayed up. It was the websites they hosted which went down.

Who is this "everybody" you're referring to? GoDaddy.com itself was unresponsive when I checked it after reading this story roughly 4 hours ago.

Re:You think this is a Game?

[xenobyte]

Did aliens just steal 50 IQ-points from everybody here?

DNS is a distributed system with caches. If your DNS-resolver (which is a cache) had the godaddy.com domain cached before the attack it will continue to resolve until the cache expires, usually 24 hours after being cached. If your DNS-resolver didn't have it cached, it will be unable to fetch the records as the authoritative DNS-servers aren't responding, and thus it will fail to resolve. Some tools, like 'dig' will tell you how long time remains on the cached records.

Glad I moved my domains

[BooRadley]

Back when GoDaddy was publicly in support of SOPA, I moved away from them. Ended up saving a lot as well.

No regrets.
 

Re:Glad I moved my domains

[tibit]

I moved to namecheap for domains and hosting, and not only is it cheaper, but the overall experience doesn't leave sour aftertaste. They have been excellent so far.

Re:Glad I moved my domains

[kullnd]

+1 Namecheap.com ... I migrated about half my domains during the SOPA deal, was going to do the rest this month (just ran out of time) .... Now some of my sites are down, and you can bet they will be moved ASAP.

Re:Glad I moved my domains

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for you, helping to help fund the man, giving them money so they can improve their service with wonderful investments in female nascar drivers that suck at nascar, aren't really that good looking and stick them in ads that are blatantly "sex sells" to appeal to you, the lowest common denominator.

You fight that good fight sir.

Re:Glad I moved my domains

[i286NiNJA]

Good work! Stand by GoDaddy, pay for expensive web hosting of low quality with a long track record of bad security and customer fucking. If more people were like you folks wouldn't be so quick to shit on the little guy.

Re:Glad I moved my domains

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot.

Re:Glad I moved my domains

[achbed]

Ditto. Tried a few different hosts, and eventually settled on gandi.net - works like a charm! A little more expensive, but I like the option of having duplicated virtual hosts on two continents just in case of failure...

Re:Glad I moved my domains

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Yep. I moved from Godaddy when they supported SOPA too.

All seriousness aside: By looking at the scantily clad women they advertise with, is it any surprise they go down?

Re:Glad I moved my domains

[the eric conspiracy]

I moved from GoDaddy to Namecheap this summer, SOPA was the last straw for me. GoDaddy made it an unpleasant process. Good riddance.

I don't condone the Anonymous action though. There are lots of good people who use GoDaddy.

GoDaddy really are bottom feeders though. Anyone using them should go home and re-think their lives.

Re:Glad I moved my domains

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not moving my site. I will not be bullied around. I'm sticking with Godaddy and seeing this through. Besides, my site is only one narrow aspect of my online presence including social media and an image host/seller.

And Stockholm Syndrome sets in ...

Re:Glad I moved my domains

[girlintraining]

All seriousness aside: By looking at the scantily clad women they advertise with, is it any surprise they go down?

I think those scantily clad women are very disappointed it can't stay up as well.

Re:Glad I moved my domains

[Bryansix]

Expensive by what standards? My work uses Total Choice Hosting. They cost more and their support is MUCH MUCH worse. I can get Godaddy on the phone in under 30 seconds and they know the answer to my questions. My website just went down for the first time in 5 years. I run Wordpress and I've never been hacked. They don't force updates on my but make it stupid simple to migrate to a new version of MySQL on my own without being on the phone with them. They give me the access and control I want and need and their website is fairly easy to navigate. You might think your hyperbole is smart but in reality it ignores the state of the marketplace.

"Activism"

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, attacking innocent people at random, could have sworn there was some other word for that...

Re:"Activism"

[Anonymous Coward]

The goal wasn't to instill fear or terror.

So you are wrong and stupid. You should feel bad about that.

Re:"Activism"

[vlm]

Hmm, attacking innocent people at random, could have sworn there was some other word for that...

"US Military Drone Attack" Hmm thats 4 words.

"Civil forfeiture" Hmm 2 words.

"Obama" or "Bush" ? Yeah I founds it.

Bob Parsons quote

[suso]

Bob Parsons, who created GoDaddy, once said "Security is for cadavers" when giving business advice to the general public.

Re:Bob Parsons quote

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I was going to be all like "citation required" and shit, but then I looked and I found this:

Bob Parsons' 16 Rules

(Yes. It's down at time of writing. That's the joke.)

Re:Bob Parsons quote

[suso]

Its his only quote on wikiquote among other places: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bob_Parsons

Re:Bob Parsons quote

[amicusNYCL]

It's online now, and that happens to be his #1 rule:

Get and stay out of your comfort zone.

I believe that not much happens of any significance when we're in our comfort zone. I hear people say, "But I'm concerned about security." My response to that is simple: "Security is for cadavers."

I guess he's not in his comfort zone. Which must mean Anonymous is doing him a favor.

Re:Bob Parsons quote

[Dishevel]

+5 Insightful.
For a quote taken out of context that means nothing even close to the implication.
  full quote is

I believe that not much happens of any significance when we're in our comfort zone. I hear people say, "But I'm concerned about security." My response to that is simple: "Security is for cadavers.

He is talking about your own personal comfort zone.
Of course you either already knew that or were you just ignorantly posting stuff you heard but never understood?

Of course I still do not like GoDaddy.
I just dislike liars even more.

Re:Bob Parsons quote

[MikeBabcock]

And its terribly out of context ... he's talking about the difference between going out on a limb to do something risky and sticking to the safe route.

It could be rephrased as "not taking risks is for cadavers."

It was NOT Anonymous.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous member AnonymousOwn3r has stated that this was not an Anonymous operation, and that he did this by himself.

Re:It was NOT Anonymous.

[kaizendojo]

So an Anonymous Coward comments that this was NOT Anonymous, but Anonymous member AnonymousOwn3r??!?

Should I beleive *ANY* of this or what???

Re:It was NOT Anonymous.

[adameros]

I was the one to my the "Anonymous Coward" comment because I was too lazy to login, but I'm not too lazy to back my post up with facts, especially when a dumbass would rather mock the poster than actually address what was said. Here is the Tech Crunch article where they admit their mistake and stop blaming Anonymous: http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/10/godaddy-outage-takes-down-millions-of-sites/ Here is where the person taking credit says it was not Anonymous, but a solo act: https://twitter.com/AnonymousOwn3r/status/245227793334546432 Anything relevant you would like to add, kaizendojo? Or just more worthless snark?

Re:Hrmph

[Bryansix]

Because they hacked an exploitable DNS system which every provider on the planet uses? Yeah, totally saw that one coming.

We need a new DNS system

[JDG1980]

Events like this further underline why we need a new secure, distributed DNS system, one that is not subject to tampering by either Anonymous or ICE. Yes, there's a huge installed base issue to deal with, but DNS is falling apart, and if things continue the way they have been, the Internet may be completely balkanized across national lines in a few more years.

Not like Go Daddy is a "good" company....

[alphax45]

Not saying that people that choose Go Daddy deserve to have their sites down, I don't blame the victim for choosing them as their provider, however Go Daddy is not exactly the most ethical company. I can see why they would be targeted in such an attack.

Don't use the godaddy DNS and you'll be fine

[hwstar]

If you have registered your domain with Godaddy, and used a third party DNS, everything will be fine. I've found it's better to use a 3rd party DNS as it allows more flexibility in managing the domain name.

Someone should email them

[sl4shd0rk]

you know, to let them know their network is down.

Danica OK

[trevc]

The important question that needs to be answered; is Danica Patrick OK?

Re:Hrmph

[dshk]

According to the article, it is a DDOS, not a hack. And GoDaddy indeed has a very bad name, at least here on Slashdot. I never made business with them, once I checked their domain registration offer, but it contained some obviously (for IT pros) misleading sales pitch, and that was enough for me one.

Unorthodox business practices. DON'T DO BUSINESS!

[yooy]

By chance GoDaddy holds one of my domain since several days for ransom. Expiration date is tomorrow and they wont release it and delaying, reviewing, delaying. Requesting me to write them from an email under the domain name, not realizing that I am already doing this and they actually answering me to an email under the exact domain name. I guess to force me to renew with them due to the expiration date is their goal. Well, they manged. I have to renew today and now I can't even do that. The review60 team at GoDaddy is a class of its own. Besides shooting elephants, half naked girls and SOPA support, they just show unorthodox, unprofessional, possibly illegal business practices. DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THEM! (The DOS attack is not their fault)

Try namecheap.com or internet.bs insteat. woT

[yooy]

Try namecheap or internet.bs insteat. woT

Re:Who instead of Go Daddy?

[heypete]

If you're already with Gandi, check out their Simple Hosting. It's pretty slick, as far as basic hosting goes: you get your own Apache/MySQL/PHP processes, the web server runs with the same permissions as your user account (so setting up stuff like WordPress is trivial as there's no permissions-related issues), can host multiple separate sites on a single instance, etc.

Their VPSs are pretty standard paravirtualized Xen systems which work out pretty well (I ran a Team Fortress 2 gameserver for a while on one and it was stable and reliable).

As a domain customer you get a 50% discount code for the first year ($30/year rather than $60/year).

Disclaimer: Gandi customer, not employed by them in any way.

WOOT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Danica Patrick, fossilized and covered in Farina!

I think this will backfire.

[Marble68]

So a bunch of non-profit groups I support are down thanks to these "activists".
SOPA opposition, "ends justify the means even if it means f*cking over everyone with our scorched earth actions", and the "if you were stupid enough to be supporting our enemy then you are just collateral damage because we are so right we're justified in harming you to make a point" aside, I don't think it will win them many fans.

Re:I think this will backfire.

[gQuigs]

If you are a non-profit paying GoDaddy for shared hosting, that's just a waste of money. Dreamhost has free shared hosting for 501(c)(3) non-profits http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Non-profit_Discount

If you do want to sign up consider giving me some referral money (10%): http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?1066796

Slashdot predates 4chan

[tepples]

Anonymous the hacktivist collective appears to have originated from the 4chan imageboard, which began operation in 2003, and it really wasn't known by the name Anonymous until a Fox affiliate gave the group that name in mid-2007. Slashdot predates 4chan by several years.

For all the dudes who're crying about

[orodos]

Losing business, etc. Sucks, but there's a trade-off when you decide to conduct business on the internet. Who cares whodunit, hacking is a part of e-culture. The internet is free, and there are some rad dudes out there expressing their freedom - just like you. You have some pretty unrealistic expectations if you expect 100% uptime. Honestly, life would be pretty boring if everything just worked like 'it should.'

Re:Webhost suggestions?

[jason777]

I believe everybody here is going to namecheap. I haven't switched mine yet because I'm using google apps and have to transfer all those settings. But due to this incident, I'm switching it as soon as godaddy is back up.

Re:Who instead of Go Daddy?

[LodCrappo]

You mean the advertising company that makes its profits by hijacking DNS requests?? The company that breaks things like MX lookups by default? The company that takes advantage of dimwits who thing anything with the word "Open" in the name is actually somehow open? That OpenDNS?

The Godaddy business model

[bobbutts]

Their plan is to advertise the most, so every idiot who decides to create a site on a whim chooses them. Complete the deal with insanely cheap promotional pricing. Then count on them being unwilling to face the technical challenge of switching to a reasonably priced host before their plan recurs at a heavily inflated price.

Glad to see them getting what they deserve

[mimicoctopus]

I used to be a GoDaddy customer until I got "fined" by them for some made-up claim of spamming. They said they'd take away all of my domains if I didn't give them $199 and I didn't have the resources to fight-back so I just gave them the money and then left their service shortly thereafter. Apparently, a lot of people have had the same issue. There was a whole thing about it on NoDaddy, but they eventually took that down somehow.

Re:Who instead of Go Daddy?

[skelly33]

I second that - their customer service sucks, flat out. Our webmaster passed away and with her went the master password for our corporate account at Dreamhost. A seemingly trivial matter for someone in customer service to handle, but after 8 months of trying they still have not successfully recovered access to the account. They have *never* received a return phone call or email back from Dreamhost support people. That includes even looking up Deamhost employees on their own site's staff directory, including the CEO himself via LinkedIn, sending emails directly to staff members, developers, IT folks, anyone we could find in the company to urge *someone* to return a damn phone call or email. Nothing. the best part was the phone number listed on their website that appeared to go to one guy's cell phone voicemail. Utter BS. I'm not going to promote GoDaddy hosting, but there are far better companies out there to deal with than Dreamhost. Don't just pick the first one you see advertising over 20 million suckers paying them every month...

Re:Who instead of Go Daddy?

[belg4mit]

HostGator. I've used BlueHost too, but HostGator's been more responsive and techie friendly.

Re:Who instead of Go Daddy?

[petermgreen]

Personally I wouldn't put my name registrations and my hosting (ideally including DNS hosting) in the same place. There are a couple of reasons for this.

Firstly afaict when the shit hits the fan at a domain name register it is common for the entries in the registery to stay in place but the admin interface to be down. When the shit hits the fan at a hosting provider it is very likely that everything they host goes down. So if your registeration and hosting are at the same provider and the shit hits the fan there you are screwed.If your registration and hosting are at different providers and the shit hits the fan at your regsitration provider you will probablly be ok in the short term. If your registration and hosting are at different providers and the shit hits the fan at your hosting provider then you can move hosting provider.

Secondly it seems prudent to minimise the chance of disputes with a company who can hold your domains hostage by not using them for anything but domain registration.