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Zoom outage caused by accidental 'shutting down' of the zoom.us domain

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Re: Zoom outage caused by accidental 'shutting down' of the zoom.us domain

#101

Post by slyall »

sgarland wrote: post #93
dewey wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s because you are maybe not in the market for MarkMonitor. If you check the whois for any global brands chances are they are held by MarkMonitor. Just like you don’t use EY as your tax advisor.

Genuinely, I don’t understand how anything other than uptime matters for a domain registrar. What services are they offering that makes them attractive to corporations?

The are supposed to also filter things like complaints. If somebody complains I'm sending spam and I only pay $20/year then my registrar might lock my domain and then I have to work to get it back online.

Mark Monitor will apply a lot more filtering to complaints.

Ironically this is allegedly what happened in this case, a complaint about the domain got it taken offline.

Re: Zoom outage caused by accidental 'shutting down' of the zoom.us domain

#102

Post by TheDong »

Animats wrote: post #85

That seriously devalues MarkMonitor's services. MarkMonitor claims to be a "an ICANN-accredited registrar and recognized industry leader since 1999". The whole point of paying for MarkMonitor is that they're an expensive service for valuable domains and are not allowed to screw up. GoDaddy should not be involved here at all.

MarkMonitor isn't at fault here.

If you register a ".ps" domain, it doesn't matter if you use MarkMonitor or Namecheap, they can't help you when the ongoing genocide results in the removal of Palestine as a country and ".ps" no longer is a valid country code top level domain.

Similarly, if you register a .us domain instead of a ".com", ".net", or ".org", MarkMonitor can't help you when GoDaddy inevitably screws up.

History has borne this out: .com domains are well-managed. ccTLDs like '.io', '.su', and '.fj' have all had significant security or availability issues because they're run by "eh, whoever the hell the country picks" with no standards.

Financially, a proper gTLD also can't raise prices unilaterally and weirdly, while if you pick a ccTLD, the country has free reign to arbitrarily change prices, delete your domain, take over your domain, etc etc.

Do not use a ccTLD.

Re: Zoom outage caused by accidental 'shutting down' of the zoom.us domain

#103

Post by layman51 »

stackskipton wrote: post #36

This smells like something happened with MarkMonitor, they accidently flagged zoom.us as brand spoofing and filed copyright complaint with GoDaddy who runs .us TLD. GoDaddy suspended the domain per the complaint.

I don’t know if I’m misremembering, but I remember getting automated service emails about how Zoom.us will be a deprecated domain in favor of Zoom.com

When this outage happened, I assumed that they finally “made the switch” over but something went wrong.

Something I heard is that there was a Twitter account @zoom_us that was also deleted today.

Re: Zoom outage caused by accidental 'shutting down' of the zoom.us domain

#104

Post by throwanem »

lolinder wrote: post #97
reilly3000 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They generally do full service brand monitoring to protect IP and maintain continuity. You would outsource monitoring for trademark infringement to them, and be certain that domain renewals are done perfectly for a portfolio of high value domains.

Which is why this outage is so weird: the entire point of paying MarkMonitor is ensuring that absolutely nothing goes wrong with a very fraught process, and they seem to have just taken down one of the biggest brands they support.

Precisely. You pay a company like this the nosebleed-inducing fees they charge so that this exact event never happens. That assurance, and not the mechanics of domain registration or canned web searches or whatever else, is their product.

It's like, as I'm sure I'm paraphrasing from something I read God alone knows how many years ago, if your publicist lets you walk into a press event with a giant blob of snot hanging out of your nose. There surely is a reason why that error occurred, and it probably is at least a pretty good reason. But no one is very surprised to see the intro invite from your new publicist.

It isn't a relationship you blow up on a whim, but Zoom that can't route call traffic is Zoom that's not generating revenue, and while the reputational impact is negligible if it happens once, it had really better happen only once. Zoom is the incumbent; no one remembers they were revolutionary once, now everyone only notices the parts they don't like. (Being a skilled but politically naïve sysadmin is much the same.)

Basically, this is why Ma Bell - which had about the only stronger possible "uptime" expectation, in that no one uses Zoom for 911 - was so uptight you couldn't even plug in a modem until about five minutes before divestiture, and specified everything down to the number of turns in the splices their technicians made. There was a fad among programmers, when I was a child, to consider such practices stodgy.

Re: Zoom outage caused by accidental 'shutting down' of the zoom.us domain

#105

Post by pigbearpig »

LinuxBender wrote: post #3
RVRX wrote: post #2

"This block was the result of a communication error between Zoom’s domain registrar, Markmonitor, and GoDaddy Registry, which resulted in GoDaddy Registry mistakenly shutting down zoom.us domain. "

Something is fishy about this. A communication error would not result in a domain being placed on hold. On hold is usually the result of a legal order or in the case of the .us TLD a nexus compliance violation. I've transferred thousands of domains from assorted dodgy registrars into MarkMonitor and can not even imagine a scenario where a miscommunication results in a domain being placed on hold.

Could it have been something as simple as "hey, zoonn.us is violating Zoom's copyright, please block it" and then someone typos "zoom.us".

Re: Zoom outage caused by accidental 'shutting down' of the zoom.us domain

#106

Post by TheDong »

apitman wrote: post #79
jsheard wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't be the first time a ccTLD has been retired after its country ceased to be, though it would be the most disruptive given how popular it is, hence the uncertainty as to what they'll do this time.

Whatever happens is going to set some really important precedent for sure.

I think '.su' is already that precedent, since it had many active domains, recently had active registration, and ICANN has announced plans to phase it out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su

See also '.yu' and friends, which have already been deleted.

Re: Zoom outage caused by accidental 'shutting down' of the zoom.us domain

#107

Post by Moto7451 »

sgarland wrote: post #83
0x0000000 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't use Godaddy directly. Godaddy is the registry for .us. Zoom's registrar is MarkMonitor, who appear to be at fault for this outage.

Never heard of MarkMonitor before. Not a great start. I had Google Domains for years, until they abruptly and bizarrely abandoned it, then I left for Porkbun. Never had a problem with either of them. I get yearly auto-renewal notices. Everything works, and it’s very boring, which is precisely what I want from a registrar.

I worked at a company that used MM and was involved in some of the domain work.

One of the really nice things about the service is they handle a lot of the general business continuity and security stuff that can really suck with traditional registrars. One of their main lines of work is they’ll work with you to resolve tld-squatting and typo-squatting by working directly with the registrars.

Even before an infinite number of vanity or scammy tlds started showing up it would be pretty difficult to find .biz to add to your portfolio of domains since the owner may just have forgotten to update their email in their registrar and were coasting on a 10 year registration. Maybe the squat was intentional and it’s now a 1:1 replica of your homepage with a phishing or other credit card scam going. Stuff like that really sucks to do yourself while handling your other responsibilities. MM was pretty successful at getting in touch with the owners in the first place and having the registrar yank and transfer in the latter case. YMMV of course.

Once a lot of tlds started showing up, and especially the porn related ones, they worked with the new registrars directly (like GoDaddy in the .us case here) in the “sunrise period” to make sure something like google.xxx doesn’t become a front page article about an actual porn site (in case you’re wondering, that one doesn’t go anywhere at all). Your other options are to work directly with each registrar or ICANN.

Re: Zoom outage caused by accidental 'shutting down' of the zoom.us domain

#108

Post by chazeon »

film42 wrote: post #47

Zoom CEO: Hi, we'd like an SLA credit for the global outage you caused our company. GoDaddy: I am so sorry about that. I can offer you a one-time coupon for $10 off your next purchase or renewal. Would you like me to apply this to your account? --- Most companies just hope an apologetic zoom call is enough to retain your business, and most of the time it works. Not enough has been written about the asymmetry of your…

I remember crowdstrike outage offers starbucks coupons? that’s way to go.

Re: Zoom outage caused by accidental 'shutting down' of the zoom.us domain

#109

Post by thayne »

stackskipton wrote: post #56
lolinder wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible, but MarkMonitor is Zoom's registrar, so there are plenty of other ways for a miscommunication between MarkMonitor and GoDaddy to cause this. Copyright complaints would be a more reasonable theory if MarkMonitor were mentioned and didn't have any other involvement.

I guess but if MarkMonitor accidently suspended it, it would be ClientHold but it was widely reported it was showing as ServerHold. ServerHold is used with Registry (GoDaddy in this case) is disabling vs ClientHold is when registrar is pulling the plug (MarkMonitor) So what would have MarkMonitor said to GoDaddy to cause them to ServerHold a domain?

Possibly MarkMoniter failed to renew the domain on time? Or there was a miscommunication around payment that led to the domain expiring?

Re: Zoom outage caused by accidental 'shutting down' of the zoom.us domain

#110

Post by throwanem »

Moto7451 wrote: post #107
sgarland wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never heard of MarkMonitor before. Not a great start. I had Google Domains for years, until they abruptly and bizarrely abandoned it, then I left for Porkbun. Never had a problem with either of them. I get yearly auto-renewal notices. Everything works, and it’s very boring, which is precisely what I want from a registrar.

I worked at a company that used MM and was involved in some of the domain work. One of the really nice things about the service is they handle a lot of the general business continuity and security stuff that can really suck with traditional registrars. One of their main lines of work is they’ll work with you to resolve tld-squatting and typo-squatting by working directly with the registrars. Even before an infinite n…

Oh, I didn't know they'd been around since '99. They called me on behalf of a Hollywood titan about one of my hobby domains, which happened to partially coincide at a dictionary word with one of their client's trademarks, some time around 2006. I don't recall that the approximate paralegal I spoke with actually identified the company; I never forgot the call, but hadn't thought to check who manages the studio's own domain. Go figure.

I found them surprisingly easy to deal with, and happy to have me on record that my toy domain had nothing to do with either their client or any money. I assumed as long as that remained the case I would never hear from them again, and for the decade or so longer I kept the domain, that was exactly how things went.

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