Live data from Hacker News

Zoho.com CEO says domain with 40M users suspended for abuse complaint

twitter.com

61–70 of 279 posts

Re: Zoho.com CEO says domain with 40M users suspended for abuse complaint

#61
post #5

Zoho CEO here. Our domain was abruptly blocked by our registrar this morning. Our NOC team and myself tried to get in touch with them and they tell us "Contact our legal". Even I could not get in touch with anyone beyond their phone operator. The domain was restored, but as DNS takes time to restore, we are still facing issues. They later claimed there were abuse complaints about Zoho.com emails (which is our persona…

If you have 40M users I suspect the annual cost from the registrar is very small part of the budget. Get a registrar where you don't have to deal with a phone operator.

I work in this industry and it's a very clear separation between bulk registrars and those that maintain fewer but high value domain names. The latter usually give you a personal contact person to call and work proactively to deal with threats to companies' domain names and trade marks. I don't think I have ever heard of a domain being abruptly suspended by such a registrar.

The cost is usually 5x-10x that of the cheapest registrars so there is naturally a balance to be struck, and as I work in this industry I might be a bit biased. However the damage when waiting on the TTL when registries update NS records sounds very substantial when they first suspend and later restore a domain name in what sound as a very reckless behavior.

Re: Zoho.com CEO says domain with 40M users suspended for abuse complaint

#63
post #5

Zoho CEO here. Our domain was abruptly blocked by our registrar this morning. Our NOC team and myself tried to get in touch with them and they tell us "Contact our legal". Even I could not get in touch with anyone beyond their phone operator. The domain was restored, but as DNS takes time to restore, we are still facing issues. They later claimed there were abuse complaints about Zoho.com emails (which is our persona…

I'd go with DYN.COM for all my domain and DNS needs for a million/billion(?) Dollar business such as this. No referral here, just advice.

This should be higher up in the comments. DNS is a seldom thought of security / point of failure. Dyn's whole business model is basically: we won't turn you off until we talk to you.

Re: Zoho.com CEO says domain with 40M users suspended for abuse complaint

#64
post #59

Running their DNS on a 2-bit registrar is exactly the kind of thing I have come to expect from Zoho. I am forced to use this company for a handful of services at my company. If I started to tell you the idiocy I've had to put up with from these guys, I'd never stop ranting. I'll save it for DevRant.

The domain was registered over 22 years ago, and it kept moving through registrars who were acquired. We do have a solid record of reliable services, and have kept growing in spite of never taking a dime in outside capital.

Re: Zoho.com CEO says domain with 40M users suspended for abuse complaint

#65

The importance of using a reliable registrar can't be overstated. tierra.net looks like a small company, without 24hr support, and with an abandoned social media presence. Why would a company with 40M users use a tiny registrar to save 2 bucks on a domain name?

I've been very happy with MarkMonitor. They have good customer service, a good reputation, and best of all, they auto-renew domains and send an invoice. That means that the failure mode is "domain is renewed, I owe them a check."

If your domains are riding on a credit card, you potentially have a failure mode of "card was declined, my domain did not renew, everything is down."

Re: Zoho.com CEO says domain with 40M users suspended for abuse complaint

#66

The importance of using a reliable registrar can't be overstated. tierra.net looks like a small company, without 24hr support, and with an abandoned social media presence. Why would a company with 40M users use a tiny registrar to save 2 bucks on a domain name?

I've been very happy with MarkMonitor. They have good customer service, a good reputation, and best of all, they auto-renew domains and send an invoice. That means that the failure mode is "domain is renewed, I owe them a check." If your domains are riding on a credit card, you potentially have a failure mode of "card was declined, my domain did not renew, everything is down."

and then someone steals the domain out from under you and you'll need to pay in bitcoins to get it back.

Re: Zoho.com CEO says domain with 40M users suspended for abuse complaint

#67
post #61
post #5

Zoho CEO here. Our domain was abruptly blocked by our registrar this morning. Our NOC team and myself tried to get in touch with them and they tell us "Contact our legal". Even I could not get in touch with anyone beyond their phone operator. The domain was restored, but as DNS takes time to restore, we are still facing issues. They later claimed there were abuse complaints about Zoho.com emails (which is our persona…

If you have 40M users I suspect the annual cost from the registrar is very small part of the budget. Get a registrar where you don't have to deal with a phone operator. I work in this industry and it's a very clear separation between bulk registrars and those that maintain fewer but high value domain names. The latter usually give you a personal contact person to call and work proactively to deal with threats to comp…

Which register do you recommend?

Re: Zoho.com CEO says domain with 40M users suspended for abuse complaint

#68
post #5

Zoho CEO here. Our domain was abruptly blocked by our registrar this morning. Our NOC team and myself tried to get in touch with them and they tell us "Contact our legal". Even I could not get in touch with anyone beyond their phone operator. The domain was restored, but as DNS takes time to restore, we are still facing issues. They later claimed there were abuse complaints about Zoho.com emails (which is our persona…

Transfer your domain to a major registrar. Tierra.net looks like some bs cheap registrar and doesn't have any social media updates on their accounts since 2017. I'd recommend Namecheap.

Re: Zoho.com CEO says domain with 40M users suspended for abuse complaint

#69
post #67
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have 40M users I suspect the annual cost from the registrar is very small part of the budget. Get a registrar where you don't have to deal with a phone operator. I work in this industry and it's a very clear separation between bulk registrars and those that maintain fewer but high value domain names. The latter usually give you a personal contact person to call and work proactively to deal with threats to comp…

Which register do you recommend?

MarkMonitor is what Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft and other huge companies use. They don't take small accounts, though.

Re: Zoho.com CEO says domain with 40M users suspended for abuse complaint

#70
This is a hard lesson for people that no matter how resilient your authoritative DNS infrastructure is, for your own nameservers (plus route53 or similar), your domain registrar is absolutely a single point of failure.

If you have something with 40M customers I'd highly recommend going with the same domain registrars used by some of the Fortune 100 companies.

Seizing a domain at the registrar level, by court order, is also how the US government implements "seizure" of domains, if you've ever seen a torrent index site that has suddenly been replaced with a big scary FBI page (examples: https://www.google.com/search?q=this+domain+has+been+seized+... )

Post reply on HN