Iwantmydomain.com randomly refunded all of my domains and locked me out | Hacker News Reader

Iwantmydomain.com randomly refunded all of my domains and locked me out

45 pointsmdatelle17 comments

This is a heads up to stay away from this shady company. Yesterday evening I saw a bunch of refund emails come through for every domain I hold with them. I tried to login to my account to see what was going on and I was locked out!

I checked a few of the websites using these domains and they were all down including my email addresses based on those domains. Even my personal domain I use for family email addresses is down and the whois shows ClientHold as the status.

I've always been in good standing with them and actually just purchased a couple more domains a few days ago with no issues. Those were refunded too!

I have an app and a consulting side business that are all inaccessible now and their support still hasn't responded. I wasn't aware of the recent itch.io fiasco until I started looking into issues with them last night. I never would have expected something like this happening. Like it's not just one domain but every single one I own!

This company obviously can't be trusted with anything your livelihood depends on.

Please help me understand the value this registrar provided over well established and well known registrars?

As someone who lived through the 90s where a well written email could see your domain terminated, a reputable registrar meant way more than low prices. And in some cases even expensive ones would rule against you (looking at you netsol).

Thing is this company has been recommended by some well known names in the developer sphere through the years. Their prices are actually on the high side. Never had a problem until now.

What do you mean a well written email could see your domain terminated? An email to who?

In the 90s domain registration was all handled through email. You emailed from an approved address, with a specific format, to change anything about the registration. This included where your name servers were.

Made self-hosting interesting when your home IP changed, or you moved, and that was where you hosted your DNS and email.

itch.io was recently taken down because an AI lawyer was fired of sending DMCA complaints to the right place and decided to send one to the registrar instead.

See Nissan Motors v Nissan Computers. Companies could simply email their registrar and say someone is squatting on their domain and registrars would acquiesce. Nissan Computers set the legal meaning of squatting which pretty much ended that practice.

Before that you were much better off using a registrar with a known dispute process (verisign) or in a jurisdiction which required a legal precedent (German registrar joker.com leapfrogged into stardom during this time)

Also the process of locking domains came out of these actions

I use them, and I chose them for several reasons.

1) They had a good reputation on here at the time (10 years ago?)

2) They have a nice panel for DNS config

3) I wanted to separate my registration from my hosting

4) I think it's a pretty well-known registrar

I'm concerned by the OP, though.

Finally got my domains back 4 days and a lot of headaches later. Here's the only real response I got from support that entire time after numerous attempts to reach someone there.

"It seems that your account was caught as a false positive by our fraud prevention systems. All fraud flags have been removed on your account and domains now and steps have been taken to ensure his cannot happen again, as well as to fully review how this came about.

Please advise if you note any remaining issues in the meantime as your account and all domains should now be fully accessible / manageable again."

I transferred my domains out of there as soon as I got access back, good riddance.

Unpopular opinion: use AWS for domain stuff. They're not more expensive than other registrars or DNS services and are very, very reliable/consistent.

I can't believe this is even a thing. You don't own anything apparently. A scam?

Talking of a scam, every first domain should be free. It's just taxation.

FWIW it's "iwantmyname.com"

That's correct. The company in question here is iwantmyname.com. Must of been thinking about how I just want my domains back when I wrote it :)

Did ownership change on the domains?

Ownership hasn't changed. They finally responded and said there was some suspicious activity on my account so they put the domains on hold and wanted me to verify my identity. Haven't heard anything back since I sent them what they wanted. They're just taking their sweet time with this while all of my services are still down. No apologies or anything.

Any update? Hoping for the best for you, sounds like a horrible situation.

Thank you, I appreciate that. Unfortunately no update since I sent them the verification they requested yesterday. Still locked out 3 days later. Just trying to do some damage control at this point. I'll keep this post updated if I hear anything new.

I might be wrong, but truly believe that you're another victim of bad implemented AI. Something triggered a bad switch, probably due to buying too many domains in such a small ammount of time? Like if you were using the domains for spam or something. Hope it gets fixed soon.

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