Why you should never use GoDaddy ever again (even for a domain search) | Hacker News Reader

Why you should never use GoDaddy ever again (even for a domain search)

zensavona.com

94 pointszensavona53 comments

Network Solutions and (I think) Register.com used to do this (probably still do), and claimed it was a "service" to prevent your domain from being snatched up by someone else before you got a chance to buy it. Of course, the fact that it meant you'd have to buy it from them was obviously just an unfortunate coincidence that they would avoid if they possibly could. I'm sure.

If I recall correctly, what they are actually doing is taking advantage of the grace period that is built in to domain name registration. They buy the domain, and will resell it to you if you want it within those 5 days, but if you don't want it, they will release it (at which point their own fees are refunded). So all you have to do if this happens to you is wait 5 days, and then you can buy it from whoever you like.

But yeah, it's a shitty practice, and you definitely should do your business through a registrar that doesn't do it.

This is old news, ICANN ended "domain tasting" via the 5-day grace period in 2009 by charging additional fees for those that engage in the practice:

http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-12au...

There are 104,419,043 .com domains out there [1] and GoDaddy claims to have registered over 53 million domains (non-.com extensions included) - what are the chances of a new domain being registered with GoDaddy? If GoDaddy were to do domain tasting they would go bankrupt pretty soon.

[1] http://www.dailychanges.com/

Domain tasting used to be easy money for spammers. Simply "taste" a huge number of domains, such as misspellings of popular sites, and put typically ad-filled domain parked pages on them. Figure out which ones make money and which don't, register the ones that are profitable, let the others lapse, and move on.

Or simply let them expire & then start another 5 day period... over & over & over again.

Sadly, this did happen.

Yeah, either way it's win/win. The only constraint is the cost of hosting, which can easily be amortized over all of your sites.

That actually doesn't fix the problem as far as registrars are concerned, because the fees only apply if you get refunds above a threshold of 10% of the domains registered. That puts registrars in a uniquely advantageous position for tasting because they register so many domains.

Here's a strategy a registrar could use. For a given 10 minute period, you take the number of domains actually bought by customers, and call that X. Then you multiply that by 10% and call that Y. Now, you take all of the domain searches for unregistered domains that have come through you within that 10 minute period, and run them through a machine learning algorithm that ranks them by the likelihood that they will be purchased. You take the top Y of that list, and taste only those. Now you are guaranteed not to exceed the threshold where you start getting charged for deleted domains.

I am not sure how this strategy would work if the end registrant gets a refund. It may be that that ends up adding to the registrars own tally of refunds, but it would be trivial to tweak the above strategy to decrease Y to adjust for customer refunds, with a controllable amount of uncertainty which can be optimized to maximize the profitability of the strategy over the long run.

So what happens if you search for a domain name on domai.nr and, three days later, you find it has been registered through domai.nr and is available on NameLayer which is domai.nr's premium domain selling service? Would you chalk it up to coincidence, especially if it's a decent name? Or will you write another blog post telling people to never use domai.nr ever again?

GoDaddy was one of the first ones to call attention to domain tasting, later referring to it as domain kiting:

http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/pdf/100804_letter_iyd.pdf

http://www.dailydomainer.com/200775-domain-tasting-monitorin...

If I, as an anonymous user, search for any of my domains on GoDaddy, I find that they'll offer to let me use their domain buy service to backorder them too, even for domains I've had since the 90's. Without any further evidence, it's impossible to tell whether you actually have a legitimate case (though a sample size of one is hardly statistically significant) or if you simply don't understand how domain registrations work.

I'd say that it would be quite the coincidence if this obscure and very specific domain was registered within 24hrs by GoDaddy, completely by chance.

It's most of the time coincidence. Especially with GoDaddy being the largest registrar. Millions of customers and two people had the same idea.

Your blog post says that it was registered through GoDaddy. That's not surprising as (last I checked) they are the largest registrar and of the millions of domain names registered a month, it's altogether likely that your domain name was one of the several hundred thousand that were registered through GoDaddy in that three day period.

However, you now claim it was registered by GoDaddy, not through GoDaddy? Your lack of precision in your terminology and the fact that you don't reveal the domain name for anyone to verify isn't helping your case.

But there are tens of thousands of people doing this sort of idle search, then later register attempt, all the time.

Even incredibly unlikely coincidences will turn up occasionally (and then trigger blog speculation). Without more evidence, coincidence is still a highly likely explanation here.

He did not say it was available on Godaddy's auction service. He said Godaddy offered to help him send an offer to the person who purchased it.

That's not the same thing at all.

This guy does not have a complaint at all. He does not have a right to every domain he searches for but refuses to buy.

(I'm one of Domainr's co-founders, and for the record, we absolutely do not, and will never, do anything ethically ambiguous like front-running.)

We hear of similar issues from time to time, and each time we've investigated, they've ended up being coincidental. The thing to do is look at whois and see when the domain was originally registered — perhaps GD is showing domains with varying "already-registered" states in their search results:

http://domaininfo.buydomains.com/domain-name-basics/domain-n...

Another (creepy, imho) thing to keep in mind is that Verisign allegedly logs and resells aggregate data from unresolved DNS requests:

http://www.domainnamenews.com/editorial/verisign-to-profit-f...

(Domainr uses the DNS to check for availability — it's hella fast, and sufficiently accurate to provide a good user experience.)

Just because its "Registered Through" doesnt mean that Godaddy owns the domain. Someone could easily just purchased it during that time and could be using Godaddy (they are the worlds largest registrar).

My dad's domain is registered through Godaddy. It says the same thing "You can view the WHOIS listing or use Domain Buy Service to get this name" when you search for it on their website. Also he is using their privacy service and the whois says this:

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, LLC (http://www.godaddy.com)

   Domain Name: XMYDADSDOMAINX.COM
      Created on: 01-Oct-03
      Expires on: 01-Oct-13
      Last Updated on: 02-Aug-11

   Administrative Contact:
      Private, Registration  XMYDADSDOMAINX.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
      Domains By Proxy, LLC
      DomainsByProxy.com
      14747 N Northsight Blvd Suite 111, PMB 309
      Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
      United States
      (480) 624-2599      Fax -- (480) 624-2598

Netsol got busted doing this in 2008[1]; they stopped after receiving a great deal of backlash. It stands to reason GoDaddy would also stop once discovered, but then they've never been a company to back down from controversy.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Solutions#Controversy_o...

He is not claiming that godaddy is doing what netsol did. He's saying, I checked on a domain, and 3 days later someone else registered it through Godaddy.

He doesn't have a claim to every name he searches for.

If he liked it, he should have bought it.

That wikipedia link states that they stopped registering domains that were searched using WhoIs but continued doing it when searching from their home page. So they didn't stop.

This is known as Domain Name Front Running.

GoDaddy have said they don't do it:

ICANN has neither accused nor investigated Go Daddy for front running. (Another registrar, Network Solutions, has come under fire for domain name front running.)

The simple truth is Go Daddy deplores this type of activity and has implemented safeguards to ensure Go Daddy customers remain protected.

I wouldn't usually defend GoDaddy, but while it is possible that they did front-run, I suspect a coincidence, or that the blog author did a search somewhere else too.

[1] http://support.godaddy.com/godaddy/you-can-trust-go-daddy-wi...

YUP.

And then, if you hit the domain at all in the next year, they will renew it and add it to their domain auction program, whereby you can bid (* (amount they've spent) 2) to win!

Not that I've, uh, had this happen, of course...

I am working an a domain search service that solves this problem.

We make it impossible for our servers to know your domain searches. We also clearly explain how, so you can verify yourself.

Contact me for beta access.

GoDaddy explicitly states they do not practice domain name front running: http://support.godaddy.com/godaddy/you-can-trust-go-daddy-wi...

GODADDY sniffed a domain that I was tracking and grabbed it on the day it expired. It is now being offered through BLUERAZOR.COM. ( a proxy company used by Godaddy to hide frontrunning activity)

GRABBING DOMAINS IS A VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW

IS GODADDY USING FAKE REGISTRANT INFORMATION TO REGISTER THESE DOMAINS?

USING A FAKE NAME TO REGISTER A DOMAIN IS IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW

CAN GODADDY THEY PROVIDE PROPER REGISTRANT INFORMATION FOR THE COUNTLESS DOMAINS THAT THEY HAVE STOLEN?

no one uses the whois unix command?

Not everyone is on Unix. Whois doesn't ship with Windows, but it can still be downloaded at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897435.asp....

1) The domain is cheap, should have registered it the first time round. 2) If GoDaddy is domain tasting, then they'd return it in 2 more days and you should be able to register it normally? 3) You shouldn't use GoDaddy because Bob Parsons is an elephant killing douche, not because they do domain tasting.

I bet the CEOs of other domain registers are cow killing douches.

I had the same problem 2 years ago - http://cl.ly/ITnW

You never should query a REGISTRAR, always directly query the REGISTRY for domain availability and whois info.

Any coder worth their salt should be easily able to make a query program as a weekend project. All the registry whois addresses are readily available.

Do you know if this is standard practice or just GD?

Also, will this kick in if you search using something like http://bustaname.com (I'm assuming they query the whoIS database directly, but I'm not sure)

Several registrars practice this, sadly.

They once screwed me for a domain in their auction. They hold my money for 45 days to refund after my credit card company sued them. They customer service is also horrible. Never ever I will use their services.

If this is true, someone should build a bot that randomly creates garbage domains and searches for them through godaddy repeatedly (so they buy millions and millions of garbage domains).

If you liked it you shoulda put a ring on it (aka domains are cheap, buy them and worry about the idea later)

What are you implying? If GoDaddy purchased every domain searched through their site, they'd go bankrupt. It's not a very sustainable business model.

Isn't the more likely explanation that someone else also thought of your excellent name and purchased it?

Not every domain... but yes, that's what he's implying, and this is not the first time the claim has been made. I've had it happen personally, and so have others I know.

I don't think the author's suggesting GoDaddy purchase every domain, but it'd be reasonable to think they might determine the relative value of domains to purchase based on search volumes. Dubiously ethical, but technically straightforward and a simple enough numbers game on the business side.

Nope. There's a five-day grace period on domain registrations. They snatch the domain to encourage you to buy it from them, and if you don't, they delete the registration and get their money refunded. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting

He doesn't claim that it happening here. He said: I searched for a domain, and 3 days later someone else registered it.

He has no complaint here. He has no right to domains he simply searched for but refused to buy.

>He said: I searched for a domain, and 3 days later someone else registered it.

No, he said he searched for a domain, and when he went to register it 3 days later, it was already taken. That is consistent with the hypothesis that GoDaddy is tasting, since 3 days would be within the 5 day grace period.

He said it was registered through godaddy. Not that godaddy owns it.

Honestly, if he really believes godaddy is tasting, there's a simple way to end the debate. Post the name of the domain so we can all see the whois.

Of course he won't do that, because his entire post is BS

As another commenter has pointed out, there's a grace period where they can purchase the domain and cancel it without paying anything.

So it is sustainable, plausible, dirty, and very much in line with Godaddy's track record.

I agree. Although not a big fan of GoDaddy, I have both searched and purchased tons of domains with them and atleast to my knowledge, they don't put a hold on the searched domains. You can do a simple experiment: search for the domain "acmenewdomain.com" in Godaddy, wait for a few mins/hours and see if it is available at say Gandi.net. However, I can't say the same about Network Solutions.

For the paranoid, just do a whois lookup yourself. If you have a linux machine edit your .profile and add "alias whoise=/root/whoise" to it. Then create a file /root/whoise and insert the following line into it

whois $1 | grep -i exp.*:

Now whenever you want to check for a domain's availability, just execute "whoise domain.com". If you receive a blank response, it is available otherwise it returns the current expiration for the domain.

A 'whois' lookup won't help the deeply paranoid:

• what about the operator of the whois service you contact? My impression from some quick Googling is that whois.networksolutions.com is the default in Ubuntu. If you fear NetworkSolution's web interface, why would you trust their whois interface?

• AFAIK, the 'whois' protocol isn't encrypted. An enterprising domainer could be sniffing for promising lookups.

Time to start inputting every domain ever into the system.

domai.nr is an excellent domain search alternative.

I'd say more than 75% of the registrars do this.

He checked on a domain name, it wasn't registered. He waited 3 days, and someone else registered it through Godaddy (most popular registrar.. so he's not the only person who uses it). Godaddy offered to help make an offer to the person who purchased it.

He doesn't say Godaddy OWNS it.. someone else registered the domain through Godaddy. BFD.

What is the complaint?

I'm not a fan of Godaddy (I'm moving all my domains to name.com).. but he doesn't have a complaint here.

If you liked the domain you should have bought it.

I understand that i should have bought it at the time (see the preface to my post - "Although this is untimately my fault") I have trouble believing that the domain was purchased by another individual because of it's obscurity, and that is the reason I'm kinda annoyed I can't have it.

This has happened to me before. Millions of names being registered, and sometimes more than one person has the same idea.

Which is why now days if I find a domain that I think I might use, but am not entirely sure about it, I waste the $8.

Chalk it up to lesson learned.

For whatever reason that I happened to lose this domain, the lesson is obviously now learned... Next time I will most definitely snap it up when the opportunity presents itself.

Since the domain isn't available anyways, what is it?

People don't do backups when warned. People don't change passwords or use password managers when warned. Interestingly enough, people don't stop using GoDaddy when warned.

Old news. I'm pretty paranoid when checking for domains that might be free. I never use my registrars search (only if I'm about to buy in the next 10 seconds).

I have been burnt a few times by godaddy in the good ol' days :)

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