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Comment by varikin | Hacker News Reader

This is disheartening to read because I have been using name.com for over year now and over, I had been happy. I did check one of my domains and found this issue, but since for most of my domains, I don't have DNS managed by the registrar, it doesn't affect me that much.

I guess I have to mull this over.

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It is the predatory behavior that basically amounts typo-squatting a domain that I find most repulsive. I'm completely technically capable and yet I was serving ads on my domain without being aware of it because they aren't respecting the way in which DNS is supposed to work.

Basically, you were using another aspect of their service without being aware of what that service was. Making assumptions isn't smart, no matter what company is involved.

Personally, I rank using a registrars DNS beside using a registrars hosting service: it's common sense that you don't do it. I mean, do you really feel sympathy for people who stick with GoDaddy's hosting service?

As with everything, you have to learn the hard way the first time. The difference though is that no other registrar I've used (6 of them) has used such an aggressive tactic that breaks DNS for monetization purposes. Typically you change the default A record and you're rid of their parked page for good.

The conclusion of my post was that one should not use name.com for DNS at all, and, if you have any ethical concerns with their aggressive monetization strategy (which I do) to not use them as a registrar, either.

Who do you use? I'd like to switch.

I have very good experiences with both namecheap and gandi... Gandi is by far my favorite but they are a bit pricy...

"breaks DNS for monetization purposes" It's not their DNS that is broken, it's your understanding of how nameservers work. Also, failure to read terms and conditions doesn't make it their fault. It's kind of sketchy, yeah, but no one who is serious about a site / hosting should ever use registrar-provided DNS service when it's so easy to set up with your hosting company / by yourself.

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