ICANN Moves Against GoDaddy Domain Lockdowns

An anonymous reader writes "ICANN is finally taking action against Domain Registrar GoDaddy's controversial 'lockdowns'. GoDaddy has long had a policy of 'locking down' domain names for 60 days after a customer updated their contact details. This put customers in a Catch 22 position: ICANN requires customers keep their contact details up to date, or risk having the domain forfeited. Yet during the lockdown period the customer is prevented from transferring the domain from GoDaddy to another registrar. If the lockdown ran over the domain's expiry date, customers were forced to renew with GoDaddy or lose the domain. ICANN proposes to ban this practice. ICANN who is charged with overseeing the Internet has long been accused of giving domain registrars a free ride. But recently after ICANN failed to discipline Network Solutions over a front-running scam, they found themselves both on the wrong end of a lawsuit by lawyers Kabateck Brown Kellner. Is ICANN's action a signal of increased vigilance in policing registrars, or is it a PR move paving the way for a complete removal of US Government oversight?"

I'd rather not buy from the likes of GoDaddy or NS

Does anyone have a list of the smaller/more honest registrars? I remember on the last Network Solutions article there were a few people talking about the better service at some of the less well known ones.

Re:I'd rather not buy from the likes of GoDaddy or

"Mein Furher! ICANN Moves!"
Yarr Yarr

Re:I'd rather not buy from the likes of GoDaddy or

I always use 1&1 Internet, which has excellent support and is extremely well priced. For hosting, Joyent is your friend.

Re:I'd rather not buy from the likes of GoDaddy or

I'm soured on 1&1 too. At work, we have one domain (our primary one) on Netsol, and the rest of the names on 1&1. Unfortunately, 1&1 bounced an email to us and put us in collections and never bothered to give us a phone call.

We only found this out when we wanted to consolidate all our domains with 1&1. (Of course, I found that our 10-year old domain had the contact info from our old ISP!)

Because of the transfer screwup, we kept it status quo with one name on NS and the others on 1&1. It was such a hassle with 1&1 that I am thinking seriously about consolidation again, only to Netsol instead! (and that is saying much!)

I'd like to see reforms at ICANN, so I don't have to worry about being screwed when some registrar is bought out by someone or when some different set of suits is put in management.

P.S. Direcnic is not the cheapest, but I use them personally and I have no reason to switch. Besides, considering their location, they have disaster preparedness down pat. :)

Re:I'd rather not buy from the likes of GoDaddy or

Chances are, you'll end up buying from GoDaddy or NS, but with the retailer's extra charge.

Re:I'd rather not buy from the likes of GoDaddy or

GoDaddy is like $10 a year, which I think is plenty cheap, so while I don't like their tactics, I don't think their pricing is exorbitant, and their online tools are pretty nice.

In this case, GoDaddy's lockdown policies are probably worth the trouble they cause. On the down side, you need to cough up an extra $10/domain if you happen to change your info, AND want to move registrars, AND wait until there are less than 60 days on your contract. On the up side, if your account gets compromised, you have 60 days to notice and fix things before it will cost you thousands of dollars in legal fees to maybe get your domains back.

GoDaddy is slimy, and they will take the spammers dollars as readily as they'll take anyone else's, but that doesn't mean they are pure evil incarnate. If you ever do have a domain you care about compromised, you'll be very, very happy with their lockdown policies.

Re:I'd rather not buy from the likes of GoDaddy or

insecure.org put up a nice list at nodaddy.com when their domain was yanked. It looks like it is still there.
http://nodaddy.com/#alternatives [nodaddy.com]

Re:

I've used Joker for a few years and have been happy with the service.

Re:I'd rather not buy from the likes of GoDaddy or

anytime there was a support query or we needed to transfer a domain with non-current details the turnaround was in the order of weeks.

I can't comment on this since I've never needed to make a support query.

However, I have always found that running your own name servers, rather than relying on the registrar's (or anyone else's) does make life a lot easier - you can make changes to your domain immediately instead of waiting around for someone else to do it, you have more chance of the changes being correct (the number of times someone has screwed up when copying and pasting from a change request email is mind-boggling) and you get to do stuff that commercial name servers usually won't let you do (set very low TTLs when shuffling servers around, set up records that aren't just the usual A and MX records, etc).

The less third parties you have to trust to run services for you, the better off you are.

GoDaddy and the spam you received today

GoDaddy is the single largest registrar of spammers, phishers, and the like. On the surface, that might sound odd, given that GoDaddy has published policies that say they'll take action, but the reality is that those are propaganda, no better. GoDaddy's enforcement of its own policies against abusers has been laughable: it's pretty obvious to everyone that they only do so with reluctance and in the face of bad PR. (See Usenet's news.admin.net-abuse.email for many discussions on this.)

This really isn't surprising, though: spammers and phishers buy domains by the hundreds, if not thousands, which makes them excellent customers. And if you're GoDaddy, you need that income (among other reasons) to fund your offensively sexist commercials.

How does this tie in? It's all about profits. Profits for GoDaddy are maximized by selling as many domains as possible and then holding them for ransom. Given how weak and slow ICANN has been, this has been a viable strategy for a number of years; it remains to be seen if something meaningful will actually happen in this case, or whether GoDaddy will just continue cementing its reputation as one of the scummiest registrars out there.

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GoDaddy : Silly name that does not describe what they do, Commercials that hide they are a very dull company providing a very menial service

they talk about "product development" and similar ... but they just sell domain names

They do not run any Root Nameservers, they do not police the system, they are selling registrations, and nothing else ...

GoDaddy not the only one

GoDaddy has long had a policy of 'locking down' domain names for 60 days after a customer updated their contact details

I ran into this exact same situation a few weeks ago with either Network Solutions or Register.com (we were bouncing back and forth between the two services working on a few different accounts, so my memory is faulty as to which one was the culprit - though I'm leaning towards NetSol). My point is that the issue is not isolated to just GoDaddy.

We wanted to transfer the account to a different registrar, but the email address on file was one that was no longer active. So we changed the address to one that was active so the transfer messages could arrive correctly, and we were told that there was a hold. Solution: I called and bitched about it. Took about 24 hours, but we were able to bypass the auto lock and move the account successfully. Not the most ideal situation, but at least there was a way around.

Re:GoDaddy not the only one

Yes, NS does it too, it has happened to me. BUT...

If you tell NS that you are trying/going to move the domain due to their (exorbitant) pricing, they will offer you a new price, much more in line with what other registrars like GoDaddy charge ($8.75/yr in my case). So basically, problem solved...

I do think the lock-down policy is a simple ploy to retain customers, no matter who implements it.

Re:

The problem with forcibly retaining your customers like this is that it makes them mad, and it doesn't really stop them. They're just going to call your technical support, which costs you money. Is making a couple bucks a year worth the support center time? Especially when you probably have made them more determined to leave? Its not a great way to run a business, and very short sighted.

Not just GoDaddy

Network Solutions does this as well. I had to update my e-mail address in my contact information in order to transfer a domain to another registrar. NS locked the domain down for 60 days because of the update. The 60 days would have lasted beyond the expiration of the domain name, meaning I had to renew through NS or risk having someone (possibly NS!) buy it first and charge me more to get it back.

It took two or three encounters with their support staff and the threat of a complaint to ICANN to get the lock removed so I could continue with the transfer.

No no no!

As someone whose ass was saved by Network Solutions' lockdown, let me tell you the lockdowns are a Really Good Thing.

Hackers can break in to your account. It can happen even when you're being careful. A lockdown means that you have time to track down a real human being and get it reversed before the domain is transferred to some registrar in China whose support reps don't even speak English.

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I go with gandi.net, who are reasonably price, have decent service, and appear to be fairly white-hat.

Re:

Check out dreamhost.com. I use them for domain names and hosting - reasonable prices, great service (my bandwidth and disk space grows every week for free), and (if this matters to you) they're carbon neutral.

Re:is there any decent non "evil"registrar out the

and (if this matters to you) they're carbon neutral.

I'm sorry, but I'm not familiar with that alignment. Is that like "True Neutral", or does it lean towards "Lawful" or "Chaotic" ends?

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All those $10 from dishonest companies add up.

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Godaddy is just $10 a year -- not a lot of money, even by poverty standards. What is it with all this namby-pamby BS when you'll spend more in a day's lunch than it's worth mulling over saving a buck a year with a different registar.

I guess some people need something to complain about!

I don't care to give money to assholes, personally, whether its $10 or $1000. Also, some people own multiple domains (I own about 10 personally), so it could potentially be more than $10.

GoDaddy's been making stupid asshole m

Re:Just a matter of proper ordering...

when you need to start thinking like this, there's something wrong to begin with.

Re:

Why spank GoDaddy? I'd rather just spank the advertising girls.

Re:ICANN

Actually, IP address allocations are handled by ARIN (http://www.arin.net/ [arin.net]) and other regional registries (like RIPE http://www.ripe.net/ [ripe.net]) and the NRO (http://www.nro.net/ [nro.net]). If you consider them the Phone Company, then ICANN is simply the Yellow and White Pages.

Re:ICANN

ARIN, RIPE, etc, get their addresses allocated to them from IANA. IANA is run under ICANN (ye, gods, too many acronyms). Basically, they manage the IP addresses of the 'net in much the same way that they manage the DNS of the 'net: they're the high-level policy folks, but not the ones you get numbers or names from.