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

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

#91

Post by snapetom » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

henriquez wrote: post #16

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.

If I recall correctly, it was a VP at GoDaddy and some underlings that were busted for this. They were personally profiting from it. GoDaddy got bad PR, those involved got punished (maybe fired?) and people forgot.

It sounds like the culprits' big sin was pocketing the money instead of letting the company pocket the money.

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

#92

Post by mmcgaha » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

This was ten or more years ago, so I cannot speak for their current practices, but I hosted a domain on a godaddy VPS, and they hijacked the robots.txt file to exclude the site from getting indexed.

Another issue that I remember was that they provided a free SSL cert that I did not want. They then charged me for renewal the following year. All it took was a phone call to get the charge reversed, but it was a phone call that I should not have been forced to make.

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

#93

Post by eloff » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #54

bhartzer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

I want to see the evidence before I believe that. I've seen nothing but speculation in this thread.

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

#94

Post by McDyver » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

Not to advertise, but easywhois.com have a no front-running policy, which prevents exactly this issue. I'm a happy customer

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

#95

Post by drchiu » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

On this topic, if it's a domain that seems highly desirable (single word, good TLD extension), I typically register it for the max period (10 years), just in case the registrar's system has a glitch and doesn't auto renew when it should.

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

#96

Post by bityard » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

roosgit wrote: post #56

I never experienced this, but I did wait too long to buy a domain. After I checked if the domain was available(it was), I started building the website. A month later the domain was bought by someone who eventually made the same thing I wanted to make. My current process for checking if a domain is available is pretty basic. I first check it in the browser. If Firefox can't find it, then I use the `whois` command. If…

I have a habit of collecting interesting yet vaguely generic domain names and holding onto them for future projects. (Which I almost never get around to.)

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

#97

Post by snapetom » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

This is just part of a long line of scummy practices by GoDaddy in its history. Bad PR for GoDaddy constantly popped up in tech news sites ~15 years ago, but it was never enough to stop their aggressive marketing. Still, I always wondered why anyone in tech would use them. Y'all know what they're capable of and what they do. Don't support that.

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

#98

Post by freedomben » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

roosgit wrote: post #56

I never experienced this, but I did wait too long to buy a domain. After I checked if the domain was available(it was), I started building the website. A month later the domain was bought by someone who eventually made the same thing I wanted to make. My current process for checking if a domain is available is pretty basic. I first check it in the browser. If Firefox can't find it, then I use the `whois` command. If…

Likewise! My great domain got bought up. Now I register them before I start building. I do find it gives me a little motivation.

Hover.com is my goto. Good pricing, super easy to use, free DNS (which I use for non-production stuff), and built in email services if you want and don't want to bother setting that up separately.

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

#99

Post by FilterSweep » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:21 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?

I assume “felons” matches a dictionary search that “ajandneeksiciajenebdh” does not

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

#100

Post by krn » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

After doing a lot of research, I would recommend Dynadot as the best domain registrar at the moment.

My main criteria were: fair prices without any coupon codes, no-upselling, free whois privacy as standard, most ccTLDs supported, REST API for everything, and at least 15-20 years of history.

I would normally prefer a European company, but Dynadot has been the registrar of wikileaks.org since 2006.