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

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

#61

Post by dannydenhard » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

mark-r wrote: post #43

mdorazio wrote: post #33

I had this happen as well in the past when researching domain names for a new product. Pro Tip: Stay the hell away from GoDaddy for everything. I've had the unfortunate task of managing a server hosted with them and it's been consistently awful (ex. I literally cannot upgrade PHP because the VPS doesn't support it and there is no upgrade path without spinning up an entirely new VPS on a different, and of course more…

I have no choice, they bought out my hosting provider a year ago.

Likewise, although recently it's improved

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

#62

Post by andylynch » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

bhartzer wrote: post #45

andylynch wrote: post #31

This is a scummy move. In the industry I work in, we call this front-running and it’s a criminal act. If the same laws applied here godaddy would be looking at a nine digit fine and jail time for whoever thought this is a good idea.

But I don't see any proof that GoDaddy is the registrant of that domain, they're just the registrar. I don't see any evidence of front-running in this case. I see it more as coincidence if anything else.

It would be easy to test - query for some random domains on their site and see what happens. Which seems close to the story here.

(As a bonus - securities regulators can easily request business records, and will raid offices if they need to - it could be argued a more energetic approach like this in the tech space would not be a bad thing and I would expect travel in this direction as economies continue to rely on further on IT and if companies pull stunts like this it will be deserved).

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

#63

Post by zeppelin_head » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

Something similar happened to me while buying a domain for my company abtesting.ai using namecheap.

I was trying to decide between abtesting.ai and abtest.ai (both were free while checking). Luckily I decided to go with abtesting.ai and got the domain right away. A week after that I decided that it may be a good idea to buy abtest.ai anyway so someone else wouldn't try to impersonate our company. However, when I checked again the domain was already sold...

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

#64

Post by Marc_Bryan » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

They are a bigtime scammers. Recently was assisting a friend to get access to a domain name which was registered in godaddy. They scammed him for a couple of hundred dollars for contacting the domain owner to get a deal on the domain and eventually nothing happened. Not even a mail was sent on behalf the scammed money as we found that the domain was owned by another friend and eventually got it transferred. He confirmed that he has not received any mail from godaddy's domain buy service since the contact was under privacy protection. Another scamming method to siphon money from people.

To make it more clear, if you need a domain which is registered in godaddy and has privacy protection enabled, please do not pay money to godaddy to broker a deal on behalf of you with the existing domain owner. They take huge sum of money, do nothing and stop responding. It's like giving your hard earned money for free to these godaddy scammers. One of the worst registrars and I don't want to open another can of worms with their really really bad service (hosting, emailing and all such services!)

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

#65

Post by GiantSully » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

Will see many domain ADs when you browse websites in the following days after search the domain

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

#66

Post by TenJack » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

Had this happen as well. Use whois in the console instead: whois felons.io

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

#67

Post by adventured » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

boxed wrote: post #44

symkat wrote: post #6

And it's free for GoDaddy to do this: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/epp-status-codes-2014-...

Can't be totally free. If we all would run random garbage through their search, at some point this evil mudy collapse somehow?

They have some systems that suggest words, word combinations, adjacent terms, and such for domains / related domains. I suspect that by leveraging those existing systems they can relatively easily tell if the names you're entering are complete garbage or not (length, any dictionary terms, high value words, etc).

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

#68

Post by ghego1 » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

I'm sorry for the OP, and at the same time a bit relieved that I'm not paranoid.

I've always feared that registrars would do that, so I've never really trusted them. The way I do it is to check only once I'm ready to buy. Of course the first thing I look for is always taken on .com, but nowadays with so many top level domains is feasible to find something good.

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

#69

Post by dgellow » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

I faced this ~6 years ago. Someone hired me for a project, at some point he told me some domain names he had in mind, and we looked them up together on Gandi, GoDaddy and other registrars to see prices and what was available. The next day he called me in shock, asking me why I bought the domain and if I'm trying to steal his company, etc (nobody else knew the names). Of course I didn't buy anything, we checked the whois and it was registered for GoDaddy... That was a quite bad experience...

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

#70

Post by codegeek » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

bhartzer wrote: post #59

scrollaway wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been doing it for years, it's a pretty well known thing at this point which is long past the point of needing new evidence. PS: Use gandi.net, both for search and registration.

In this case, felons.io, there is no registrant listed, even on who.godaddy.com. So how can you definitively say that GoDaddy saw that search from the OP and registered the domain? I'm not saying they didn't do it, but I base my opinions on facts, not speculation or "they've been doing it for years". I'm just not seeing any evidence in the WHOIS record that GoDaddy registered that domain--it could have been one of th…

It happens way too many times with Godaddy so even though it is still speculation, but seems very likely now that they do this stuff. I have seen this complain from people a few times in the past and they all mention GoDaddy.