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Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

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

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> "...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.

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