Tell HN: Namecheap gave my account to an unverified third party • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: Namecheap gave my account to an unverified third party

#61

Post by maxgashkov » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 10:44 PM UTC

sandeepkd wrote: post #40

In the absence of actual details its hard to say what was considered for making this decision. If I have to take a wild guess then being able to demonstrate the control on the webserver hosting the content could have been one way to prove ownership over the domain. It can be called social engineering, however one can also put it in category of account recovery by verifying content control on the domain. The part wher…

Webserver control is never used and must not be used to prove domain ownership. If you're pwned and have to re-point to a server stood up from backup, having registrar relying on someone being able to put up a random file on a compromised machine would be a total security disaster.

Re: Tell HN: Namecheap gave my account to an unverified third party

#62

Post by crabmusket » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 10:44 PM UTC

pilingual wrote: post #19

Namecheap has been owned by a private equity firm for several months now. It would be nice to have a nonprofit registrar so jumping every few years isn't necessary.

For something as basic as domain name registration, absolutely. It takes someone willing to be a bit philanthropic to do it, I guess.

Re: Tell HN: Namecheap gave my account to an unverified third party

#63

Post by The_Blade » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 10:44 PM UTC

Retr0id wrote: post #10

addaon wrote: post #7

Well, they didn't call it NameCompetent, did they?

They're not even cheap these days, either. I'm still with them as a matter of laziness but I really need to migrate out.

namechintzy.com is available

Re: Tell HN: Namecheap gave my account to an unverified third party

#64

Post by terminalbraid » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 10:44 PM UTC

porkbun is really good

Re: Tell HN: Namecheap gave my account to an unverified third party

#65

Post by system2 » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 10:45 PM UTC

sigio wrote: post #28

linsomniac wrote: post #21

CloudFlare has their plusses and minuses, but they do offer domain registration at cost, for example $10.46/year for .com (every year, not one of those deals for the first year then more expensive down the line).

The problem is that they then force you to use them as a DNS host as well.

I am totally fine with cloudflare DNS. There is nothing better with free tier out there. Can't beat $10.

Re: Tell HN: Namecheap gave my account to an unverified third party

#66

Post by mook » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 10:46 PM UTC

ethin wrote: post #38

paxys wrote: post #24

People are (rightfully) concerned about superintelligent AI but social engineering continues to be by far the biggest attack vector for digital infrastructure. And it’s being made worse by companies continuously cutting costs in areas like support. The call center employee making third world minimum wage doesn’t give a shit who the real owner of the domain is. They want to end the call quickly and get 5 stars from th…

Honestly I'm wayyy more concerned with social engineering attacks than some theoretically superintelligent AI. Social engineering is, IMO, the far worse of the too

Isn't prompt injection basically social engineering for LLMs already anyway?

Re: Tell HN: Namecheap gave my account to an unverified third party

#67

Post by Georgelemental » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 10:46 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #24

People are (rightfully) concerned about superintelligent AI but social engineering continues to be by far the biggest attack vector for digital infrastructure. And it’s being made worse by companies continuously cutting costs in areas like support. The call center employee making third world minimum wage doesn’t give a shit who the real owner of the domain is. They want to end the call quickly and get 5 stars from th…

Superintelligent AI is getting very good at social engineering. See e.g. voice cloning scams

Re: Tell HN: Namecheap gave my account to an unverified third party

#68

Post by AussieWog93 » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 10:47 PM UTC

sigio wrote: post #28

linsomniac wrote: post #21

CloudFlare has their plusses and minuses, but they do offer domain registration at cost, for example $10.46/year for .com (every year, not one of those deals for the first year then more expensive down the line).

The problem is that they then force you to use them as a DNS host as well.

Honestly I don't really see this as a bad thing for the average person. I don't register my domains with CloudFlare, but I do all my DNS through them and it's great.

Everything propagates in 10 seconds rather than 10 hours.

Re: Tell HN: Namecheap gave my account to an unverified third party

#69

Post by OutOfHere » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 10:48 PM UTC

terribleperson wrote: post #27

pilingual wrote: post #19

Namecheap has been owned by a private equity firm for several months now. It would be nice to have a nonprofit registrar so jumping every few years isn't necessary.

...seriously? Where do I jump ship to now?

Two more are NearlyFreeSpeech and UnstoppableDomains.

The latter also supports crypto domains which have no chance of a takeover except by government order, although crypto domains require the client to install a browser extension or other software to resolve. The good thing about crypto domains is that there should be no renewal fee, although there will be a fee to update the record.

Re: Tell HN: Namecheap gave my account to an unverified third party

#70

Post by system2 » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 10:49 PM UTC

I have important domains on Namecheap. Should I move them to Porkbun or Cloudflare? I only buy cheap, throwaway-type domains with Cloudflare, as I find them too corporate-like to support me for my cheap $10 domain, and that's why I kept good ones with Namecheap despite their 2x pricing. I want to work with an American company with real support. (But not with godaddy of course).