Zoho.com CEO says domain with 40M users suspended for abuse complaint • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by wafflesindeed » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 10:07 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #61

svembu1 wrote: 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…

Hey mate,

I've always been a bit perplexed as to how registrar's are created. How could I become a registrar?

Any advise or resources to explore this very open question would be wonderful.

Cheers J

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

#112

Post by awill » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 10:14 PM UTC

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #63

unixhero wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except Oracle recently purchased DYN. It will be interesting to see if they maintain their previously good reputation.

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

#113

Post by ttul » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 10:23 PM UTC

svembu1 wrote: 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'm sure that Zoho has many talented engineers, but to manage abuse on the scale of 40M users you might benefit from engaging with one of the firms that specializes in this area.

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

#114

Post by ttul » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 10:24 PM UTC

svembu1 wrote: post #85

belorn wrote: 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…

Yes, that is good advice. We are reviewing all our processes about domain registries right now. Major lesson learned, and I would encourage other companies to think this through and learn from our experience today.

Cloudflare Secure Registrar - I know you guys probably in some ways compete with Cloudflare, but maybe give them a call. Or for that matter become your own registrar and get into the corporate registrar business. With this experience under your belt, no doubt you'll crush it!

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

#115

Post by ttul » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 10:25 PM UTC

taf2 wrote: post #67

belorn wrote: 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?

Cloudflare Secure Registrar. Few people know that Cloudflare operates a registrar, but they do. The pricing is $enterprise, as it should be:

"Cloudflare Registrar is the highest level of registrar security. It protects your organization from domain hijacking with high-touch, on and off-line verification of any changes to your Registrar account. Cloudflare is an ICANN accredited registrar providing secure domain registration for high-profile domains."

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

#116

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 10:27 PM UTC

tlamponi wrote: post #45

svembu1 wrote: 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…

Just FYI, I'm one of the maintainers of a mid-size forum regarding opensource virtualization/containers and thus spam is a daily occurrence. While the fight against it is rather dire and no end will ever be in sight, I'll nonetheless never stop (tool assisted) fighting. Anyway, @zoho.com addresses used by spammers started to pop up circa a month ago and increased rapidly in occurrence. As we use stopforumspam to repo…

[deleted]

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

#117

Post by ttul » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 10:27 PM UTC

nodesocket wrote: post #73

svembu1 wrote: 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 highly recommend AWS Route53 domains paired with their DNS service. Pay for the AWS support plan so you can call. I suspect Zoho is a multi-million dollar company at this point, should not be using a discount registar.

$400M PA reportedly...

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

#118

Post by srgseg » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 10:27 PM UTC

ttul wrote: post #4

This is why you register your domain with MarkMonitor or Cloudflare. I cannot comprehend why they were so stupid to use a registrar that is not corporate oriented. This is just unreal.

Do you happen to know how much Cloudflare charges for this?

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

#119

Post by kweks » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 10:28 PM UTC

kevingrahl wrote: post #81

TekMol wrote: post #51

So as a domain owner you are completely at the mercy of your registrar? What is considered a reliable registrar in Europe?

For private or business use? Privately I’m pretty happy with Namecheap, they never failed to provide the support I needed in a friendly and precise manner. For business purposes with high value domains MarkMonitor seems to be the industry leader.

I love namecheap - customer for over 10 years - but a recent incident has me rethinking my patronage. We recently received a "lawyer DDOS" - where a law firm sent multiple letters claiming /alleged/ trademark infringement. Without proof of identity, proof of subpoena, judge's order - whatever - namecheap rolled over on their WHOIS protection. There was no dialog, no email from legal, nothing.

I was dismayed to see that someone can literally send one email, get your personal info, and impact your company.

Very disappointed in namecheap.

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

#120

Post by ttul » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 10:28 PM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #93

ttul wrote: post #4

This is why you register your domain with MarkMonitor or Cloudflare. I cannot comprehend why they were so stupid to use a registrar that is not corporate oriented. This is just unreal.

That's a lot of strong words in a short comment for an honest mistake. I don't think this is called for with pretty much any unintentional error where we don't know the exact background.

When you have 40M users, this is an inexcusable oversight. It points at Zoho having an incompetent CIO role. An experienced and appropriately paid CIO would most definitely have had this near the top of his or her list years ago.