Namecheap Makes $44,000 Donation to the Electronic Frontier Foundation | Hacker News Reader

Namecheap Makes $44,000 Donation to the Electronic Frontier Foundation

elliotsblog.com

341 pointstnd12393 comments

Namecheap also bans the word 'hacker' from URLs. If you want to register a domain with the word hacker (and a bunch of other words which they won't release), they give you a giant warning basically equating hackers with criminals, and make you submit a request to them before them that they have to okay before you're allowed to register.

Oh, and you can't use a credit card (hackers steal those, you know!), you have to have funds already in your account.

I'm sorry, name cheap, I want to love you, and stuff like donating to the EFF makes me want to love you even more, but please stop this absurdity of hackers == criminals.

(I found this out when registering raspihacker.com -- which is clearly a front for me evil criminal enterprise!)

Here, I just tired to register "potatohacker.com" and got this: http://i.imgur.com/uz4yrBt.png

> "...basically equating hackers with criminals..."

Let's not get carried away.

I have accidentalhacker.com registered with Namecheap. I recall having to have a quick phone call with support to make sure I was legit. Really, it's not that big a hurdle.

I was able to pay with my credit card and I've been extremely happy with their service and support.

Yes I have a domain with 'hacker' in it registered with namecheap too, and for me it was a simple online chat with live support.

What is their criteria for determining if a registration is legitimate?

Apparently, that you aren't reluctant to call them.

That's awfully strange. If you were wanting to do anything clandestine you would think to use the most unoffensive domain possible, not advertise that you are now going to do something untoward to your visitors.

Exactly my thought. If I was planning on phishing, say Bank of America customers, I will register something like BankkofAmerica.com. Not BankHacker, or PhishingBank.com. Lol, I wonder whose idea at NameCheap it was. No dearth of stupid people in the world. And for the people who are saying, "it was just a phone call" or "just a quick chat", the thing is just the whole idea is ridiculous, to have to chat with someone to register a domain with a particular keyword in it. Its just like GodDaddy would not let you register any domain with the word "godaddy" in it. As if they own the ICANN and they have the right to every single domain with that word in it.

Hey, I'm Namecheap's community manager and we've spoken to @blhack about this earlier (https://twitter.com/jonmarkgo/status/283995904699150337). We are aware that our list is way out of date (it's been around for a long time). We plan to update this list. However, we've got a lot of items on our agenda and this is a process. As such, it can't happen overnight.

We do appreciate your patience.

It shouldn't take months to fix what comes down to an array of keywords or a regular expression. This is the equivalent of a pile of dishes sitting in the sink and you know it will take only 15 minutes to do them, but instead you just let them sit there.

While we understand that it could take 15 minutes for one person to do, please note that we have a LOT of items on our to-do list, and this requires involvement from many teams (multiple folks and teams need to discuss and review the list, we need to escalate to our developers, etc).

In the past few months alone, we've added a bunch of new TLDs. We included autorenew on domain services. We added a new Onepager web hosting service. We created this EFF fundraising effort. We created the best SSL reseller plan out there. And there's more. We've been busy.

Further, we're working on features that many of you have requested -- and are hoping to roll those out this year.

There are a lot of items on our agenda. This, too, is on our agenda. It will happen. It just won't happen overnight.

I realize I'd be thinking along the same lines as you if I were you, smartwater, but Namecheap is a company. It's not a one person entity. Therefore, again, this is a process. More than one person is involved in this process and it is planned.

I don't know, maybe this isn't someone's hobby website. If I had to make a change like that where we work, it'd have to go through a few layers of QA testing/approval before going live.

It might actually take a little effort and time. We don't know what's involved.

Thanks greyboy, exactly what I said here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5109432

Ditching corporate speak, what you probably want to say is that this is not your priority.

What are your priorities?

I read that in perfectly fine English. That's not corporate speak, it's a guy doing his job taking extra time out of his day to inform disgruntled users on a forum in some corner of the internet.

A girl, really. ;)

Thanks.

Well, not necessarily. The guy who stole $6M worth of bitcoins with his pyramid scheme used 'Pirateat40' as his id.

Geeks (include those here) tend to admire and trust those who call themselves hackers (not those mainstream media call hackers), perhaps partly because of your theory, that "real" hackers don't like to call themselves hackers.

> "can't use a credit card"

I've been paying namecheap via credit card for a while, including last week.

>Oh, and you can't use a credit card (hackers steal those, you know!), you have to have funds already in your account.

You couldn't be wrong enough. I understand you are disappointed, but one should check before saying things like this.

Hey all,

You've asked - we've answered. Your voices have been heard and we've expedited the removal of the term "hacker" from having any types of restrictions on registration. You can now register potatohacker.com or whatever else you'd like to hack..erm, register, right now, without having to contact us directly to do it for you. :)

Thanks all for your feedback and we appreciate your support.

Tamar, Namecheap Community Manager

Are you sure about that? I just tried to register somethingsomethinghacker.com and got through the checkout process to the point where it asked me for a credit card. I didn't proceed (because I don't want the domain).

I just tried it and got this error: http://i.imgur.com/uz4yrBt.png

Did you try livechat? I'd be curious if it was "potato" or "hacker" that was blacklisted.

I didn't want to be rude and waste their live chat peoples' time when I didn't actually care about the domain.

it says that it is for the word hacker in my scrot.

Did you have to use the word "scrot"? Ergh!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrot

I know about the program. Terribly named.

Probably something related to old-timey NINA signs.

I think that shows they can stereotype the kind of people who register hacker give them headaches.

That actually seems very reasonable.

Nice thought. I have an image of the person in mind. Young, male, looking to break stuff, mums credit card in hand. I miss those days in some ways, but not so much.

Namecheap added proper credit card processing (without adding funds to your account) last year, including (FINALLY) automatic renewal.

  Oh, and you can't use a credit card (

So I've been paying with wishes and unicorn dust?

They should fix the hacker thing (though I just tried and was not able to reproduce)... but I have not experienced any problems paying with a credit card in my 5+ years of being a NameCheap customer.

I wonder how new this policy is. I've had http://www.readwritehack.com registered with Namecheap since 2008.

namecheap is an American company, so be prepared to have your domain taken under the guise of copyright infringement. The domain doesn't have to be associated with piracy as demonstrated previously by the FBI.

I use namecheap for all my domains, and I rate my experience with them. I've had no troubles with them, though if you rely on your domain for income I'd change it to a country with friendlier laws.

That's true regardless of registrar if its a US-controlled TLD such as .com (Verisign), .net (Verisign), or .org (PIR).

I assume the service uses funds to prevent things like cards failing and causing domains to expire.

Maybe they're sick of subpoena requests from criminal domains?

You can't use a credit card if your domain has one of the banned words.

(Sorry, I can't edit anymore. I didn't mean you can't use a credit card at all, that would be silly, I meant that if yo're determinmed to be one fo the evil hackers, then you can't.)

FWIW, I registered two domains recently through namecheap using a credit card.

I transfered over azhackers.com and got no warning or messages. Maybe because it a transfer, or during the "abandon godaddy" rush.

Hey I know you! See you tomorrow at assemble az walkthrough?

Yes!

I remember having this issue when I wanted to move http://hackeryper.net but I don't remember how I fixed it, maybe talking to someone in support. this to me means it wasn't a painful experience, therefore fine for me. I like namecheap and I am not looking forward to change.

Namecheap probably makes you fund an account to avoid paying processing fees for each transaction. Also, most people don't use 'hacker' like our relatively small community does. The person that wrote the blacklist might not even be a programmer, or maybe they are but they know something we don't about problematic domain registrations.

Glad to see voting with my money is having a real impact. I've been using namecheap since the godaddy fiasco and love the service.

"the" GoDaddy fiasco. Heh.

Yeah, you have to be more specific. The "Godaddy SOPA fiasco of 2012" maybe

This seems to be the definitive fiasco, though.

To GoDaddy elephant hunting fiasco of 2011 was what made me switch. SOPA fiasco just made me feel good about having done it already.

Hey, I recognize that name... ;)

All of them.

I've always thought of a fiasco as a series of FUBARS, each compounding the last. Not sure I know a term for series of fiascos. Maybe GoDaddy are breaking new ground here.

Then the collective shall be a godaddy of fiascos?

Same here now if only transferring from GD to NC was cheaper!

It's pretty cheap, I thought. It sucks if you have a ton of domains, but transferring over also renews the domain for an additional year, so the transfer itself really costs basically nothing. I just transfer whenever it's coming close to time to renew my registration anyway...

"if only transferring from GD to NC was cheaper"

You might pay more in the long run with GD.

It's worth pointing out the while NameCheap is a accredited registrar, they register all customer domains via eNom. You'll be subject to Demand Media's (eNom's parent company) whims and policies.

What a shame. I like NameCheap's style, but Demand Media and their shitty search-engine-spamming content farms can kiss my entire ass.

Not that I feel strongly on this topic or anything.

I think your thinking of Name Media, I always confused the two as well.

I am definitely thinking of Demand Media: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_Media

Name Media does it too. Demand Media owns HotKeys which is a big domain parking platform. eNom also does parking.

I wish someone like givewell would do domain-specific comparisons. I'd like to find out the best: 1) Drug policy organizations (e.g. MAPS) 2) Violence/gun violence organizations (which are both pro-2A/RKBA and anti violence) 3) Digital freedom organizations (like EFF). 4) Immigration reform for tech entrepreneurs 5) Encouraging tech entrepreneurship, particularly for underrepresented groups (veterans, women, racial minorities, geographic areas outside SFBA)

I respect that you can probably save a lot more lives by giving out malaria nets in Africa than by donating to MAPS or the EFF, but I personally care a lot more about drug policy and computer freedom, so when I'm making a voluntary charitable donation, I'd prefer to address those issues (particularly if I'm in the tech industry and making a corporate donation).

I'm a fan of EFF, but not convinced they're the most efficient way to donate a marginal $1, since they already seem to have a huge amount of funding. In general I prefer donating to very small organizations doing very targeted work with low overhead, and with an "end date" where once they accomplish their mission, they disappear.

Let us know if you find some organizations that you like! I'm sure many here would love to read such a post and help contribute.

Namecheap is so awesome, sopa, eff, great customer service- I wouldn't be surprised if their next move was to start accepting bitcoin as a payment method.

Talk about a tech-savvy business!

Also see https://www.gandi.net/supports/ , though I'd love to know some amounts or at least orders of magnitude there.

Gandi also has a moral code in their TOS. No thanks.

For the curious:

"Gandi cares about the rights and freedoms of everyone with regards to the respect of others, adheres to all applicable laws, and participates in the development of a responsible Internet, notably in helping in the fight against certain infringements, notably abusive and/or deviant uses of the Internet.

By accepting Our Contracts and using Our services, You agree to abide to Our code of ethics which consists, in particular, of protecting and respecting minors, human dignity, public order and good moral standards, not infringing on the rights of third parties (private life, image, honor and reputation, trademarks, designs and models, copyrights, etc.) or the security of persons, property, the government, or the good working order of public institutions, and to help in the fight against abusive and/or deviant uses of the Internet (spamming, phishing, hacking, cracking, or attempts at hacking or cracking), or any other infraction as cited in the Penal Code."

Gandi's always seemed pretty laid back, and I suspect they don't really care what you do unless you're really a jerk. Having a vague "code of ethics" seems like mostly an escape clause that basically lets them yank your account if you abuse it.

I was a customer couple of years ago. To this day I still get their newsletter and there's no link to cancel it. They say you have to log in and change your "newsletter settings".

Also their stupid auto-generated username "XY<account_number>-GANDI".

Why don't you contact them? I can't imagine it'd be hard for them to unsubscribe you from that (I did easily, but I'm still a customer so I could log in and do it).

Spam them in your mail client and send a report.

Brilliant marketing.

That was going to be my comment as well: nice idea and well executed. I think it manages to balance the marketing and charity/cause angles well, which is a balance that's pretty easy to flub.

It's essentially a positive sum interaction. I dream of a future where nearly all interactions are as such.

One more reason I use Namecheap, and have moved almost all of my clients to namecheap. (They really do need an affiliate program though!)

They have one: https://www.namecheap.com/other/affiliates.aspx

Thanks, didn't know about that. 15% of first purchase, eh? Since most people transferring will only buy a year for ~$10, a $1.50 one-time payment doesn't really do the trick! An ongoing 15% would be more like it.

These guys are not only smart but knows how to take down the GoDaddy giant.

May I also recommend Nearlyfreespeech.net, an excellent registrar and host with a good record of upholding free speech?

One example of upholding free speech: http://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2012/10/06/official-uk-gove...

Very cool. Just picked-up a few certs from them and I need to register a few domains soon. They'll be my first choice.

I'm going to have to transfer from godaddy->namecheap, this is the kind of thing I love to see ISP's do.

any hackernews users review of namecheap as registrar, DNS, and/or email hosting?

I took advantage of yesterday's sale to transfer the last of my domains from GoDaddy. Namecheap has a decent website with an intuitive interface for managing domains, pretty good knowledgebase and forum, and nice features like email alerts for account activity. GoDaddy lost me as a customer because of their unreadable emails and deliberately unintuitive web interface. Namecheap is a refreshing change. I only use them as a registrar, since I handle my own DNS and email. I've dealt with around 10 different registrars over the years and like Namecheap the most, so far.

I've been using them since the GoDaddy elephant hunting thing. I'm about 80-90% satisfied. The control panel is a bit messy, and the one time I contacted support they were generally helpful but not amazing. No plans to change registrars, and I would recommend to friends.

We're working on a UI overhaul. Your feedback is noted. :)

Because support is already awesome, right? :)

I've been using them for years and currently have 39 domains with them. Their control panel is easy to use. The didn't used to have auto renewal which was really annoying but they finally added it last year.

I strongly recommend against using registrar DNS hosting. Most registrars offer DNS as a value added service and don't put any effort into making it fast. I've seen GoDaddy's DNS servers take hundreds of ms to respond. I've not tested Namecheap's servers. If you want something free use CloudFlare. If you want something cheap use Route 53. Both are good, fast services and are far superior to what you'll get from a registrar.

I've used them since 2004 for DNS and email hosting -- never had any problems.

I've been very pleased with their registrar and SSL offerings.

Everything is perfect, been using all those for years. The email GUI is crappy though, but personally I never use it. I only send automated emails programatically, or manual emails with Thunderbird.

Just registered a .me domain to use along with github pages.

Honestly I'm glad somebody else got the .com domain, having "myname.me" is pretty cool

I was regretting registering my domain with them recently, but not anymore, I'll be renewing it just because of this. nb

Awesome.

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