Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

#11

Post by sosuke » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

Is there a safe method to search for domains?

Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

#12

Post by shiftpgdn » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

nickphx wrote: post #7

hsnewman wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if they have any logarithms that would attack this vulnerability? Someone could write a script to simply search several times for 1000's of names and bankrupt godaddy...

Their domain cost as a registrar is a fraction of retail pricing.

No it's not. GoDaddy has to pay the domain registry (verisign, donuts , etc) for the registration plus a small fee to ICANN. Domains are typically extremely low margin and profit is made up on add-ons.

Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

#13

Post by birdfeeder8891 » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

They also say "domain unavailable" if you include "godaddy" in the domain name. Any other site will let you register profane domains with "godaddy" in them.

Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

#14

Post by maremmano » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

I use domainr.com often and never had this problem. Just in case you need a nice alternative.

Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

#15

Post by dddddaviddddd » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

sosuke wrote: post #11

Is there a safe method to search for domains?

Just use the `whois` tool?

man page: https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=whois

source code: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/usr.bin/whois...

Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

#16

Post by henriquez » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

Wow, this is a blast from the past. I know Godaddy got busted doing this years ago. I forget whether they were sued or just hounded with bad P.R. but I thought they promised to clean up their act. I wish I could find the article now, but Google only pulls up stuff from the last year or so.

Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

#17

Post by csunbird » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

sosuke wrote: post #11

Is there a safe method to search for domains?

https://lookup.icann.org/ is what I use for basic whois information before buying and check if they domain is available.

Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

#18

Post by miroz » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

It happened to me too, while I was trying to find the domain name for the new project. It was free and the next day it wasn't.

But, what godaddy does with the domain they registered? Do they try to sell it to you for an exorbitant price? What's their deal?

Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

#19

Post by rkeene2 » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

sosuke wrote: post #11

Is there a safe method to search for domains?

Yes, asking for the SOA record for the zone within the parent domain is safe and usually good enough -- and will tell you if it is registered (but not definitively if it is NOT registered). Following up with a single normal WHOIS.

Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com

#20

Post by bleepblorp » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

Some TLD registries have policies to prevent registrars from front-running their clients by squat-registering their domain searches.

But, if you're working in a TLD where Freedom is more important than actual free markets, do your domain checks against the root servers yourself with dig +trace.