Namecheap disabled imgur.com for abuse | Hacker News Reader

Namecheap disabled imgur.com for abuse

facebook.com

20 pointscitricsquid19 comments

I'm Namecheap's Social Media Manager and just want to be clear that the issue here stemmed from trying to contact Imgur regarding child pornography. We made 6 separate attempts to contact Imgur before the domain was disabled. We do admit that perhaps we should have been more aggressive in contacting Imgur , and this is a matter being looked into by our CEO, who added the following to the Imgur update:

"I'm the CEO of Namecheap here. Just want to let you all know that I am personaly looking into this. The domain was taken down by an overzealous abuse team member who had no knowledge of who imgur was. Although we did send 6 seperate emails over the last week, it should have still been escalated. I am reviewing our policy to see how we can avoid this type of situation further in the future. To the folks at IMGUR, I want to sincerely apologize for this situation and the extreme inconvenience this has caused you. If you can connect me with someone in your company. I'd like to give you a personal call and discuss the matter further."

We know that these incidents are unfortunate but are learning experiences for everyone involved. We hope that those of you who are using Namecheap continue to do so and let us work to make the experience a better one for everyone, and we hope that those of you who have not yet used Namecheap don't let this one incident from keeping you away from us. As you can see, we are doing whatever we can to make it right. Hope you can (continue to) give us a chance.

R.I.P. abuse team member

You have my phone number. Can I expect a phone call before you do something like this to my domain? I don't think it is too much to ask.

We're revising internal policies so that this doesn't happen again.

A new reply: "The site was disabled for abuse. Their abuse policy is bad and they should feel bad. We will no longer be using their service after this. Thanks everyone for your patience!" http://www.facebook.com/imgur/posts/10151258499312471?commen...

And here's our reply: (disclaimer: I'm the social media manager at Namecheap and a huge fan of Imgur)

We were in contact with imgur about a matter regarding child pornography for which we are unable to provide additional details. We sent six emails requesting that they get in touch. Since they did not respond to us, this resulted in us temporarily disabling the domain, though we should have made additional measures to get in touch, and for that, we apologize, and our CEO is also monitoring this matter closely. At Namecheap, it is critical that you always keep your whois information current and ensure that the emails on file are email addresses you check regularly. Again, we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience but are happy to hear that everything is back in order.

Have you used this before? http://imgur.com/removalrequest

I've used it and images were deleted within hours.

But the bigger question at hand is why does Namecheap feel like they can change the nameservers of domains based on the content of said page? The content on the page is in no way hosted on any of Namecheaps systems. Not even a DNS query for imgur.com hits Namecheaps servers.

What's next, Namecheap starts taking down domain names that blog about things they don't agree with? Where does it end?

Ryan, as you can see, Namecheap's CEO Rick Kirkendall replied to all of your concerns on the Facebook thread itself. As Rick acknowledges, policy was not followed and things will change.

Thanks for sharing this OP - I have all of my domains with NameCheap, they have been my favorite registrar for years, but i'm thinking it is time to start moving away from them.

I've noticed NameCheap support has really gone down hill recently. I used to get issues resolved rather quickly (within an hour), but now tickets take upwards of hours just to get answered, and usually with a canned message unrelated to the issues, resulting in further communication to resolve relatively simple things.

I think this incident is the last nail in the coffin for me. It's also sad to see that NameCheap's official response doesn't make sense as well... They state that they made six separate attempts to contact Imgur, yet go on to say they should have been more aggressive; it makes me wonder if they just emailed them - it went to an old box and didn't bother picking up a phone. Having some high traffic domains myself, this makes me really uneasy. Regardless of the issues at hand, every possible attempt should be made to contact the company before they suspend the domain, and if the alternative is unavoidable, a TTL of minutes at most; two days it ridiculous.

It's a shame, finally thought I found a good registrar.

Thought this might be of interest to people here as recently Namecheap.com is being celebrated as the saviour from poor registrars.

The DNS was updated to:

imgur.com. 172800 IN NS blockedforabuse.pleasecontactsupport.com. imgur.com. 172800 IN NS dummysecondary.pleasecontactsupport.com.

The 4 month TTL on the record is just the icing on the cake. I'm moving the rest of my domains off of Namecheap after hearing this. It's extremely troubling to hear Namecheap has no problem changing your domain's name servers without your approval.

Thats's two days, but it's still ridiculous.

You're right, I forgot another divide by 60.

Anyone else find it ironic that they have this major marketing scheme to promote internet freedom, yet suspend domains freely? lol

Great, I was just thinking of transferring a bunch of domains there. Any recommendations for a better registrar?

I transfered some of my NameCheap domains over to Gandi[1] a few months ago and after hearing this I'm about to move the rest.

[1]https://www.gandi.net

Hover.com

pairnic.com. They aren't the cheapest, but they aren't expensive either.

A little surprised that this happened without a phone call first.

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