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Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
101–110 of 751 posts
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#102I 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 had serious issues with Godaddy as well. Absolutely horrible performance as well.
Me too. But the worst was that I can only contact them by calling them. What?
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#103Pretty sure I first heard about them pulling these tactics over 10 years ago. Sad it's still ongoing.
IIRC, after Godaddy blew up with their Superbowl commercial they've been ratcheting up the scam factor in every way possible. Just avoid them completely.
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#104Just use whois on the cli
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you link some prior evidence? I can believe it but is there proof? Could some other data have led another party to registering OP's domain idea?
C'mon.. it's one google search away. https://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/registrars/msg... Lots of instances of it, I won't bother listing all of it here as I'm on a phone.
That link seemingly has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Then someone cobble together a tool that automatically queries words from a dictionary on godaddy, maybe with variations like numbers appended, "the" prefixed or hip things like turning -er into -r.
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#107Back when I was in college, GoDaddy let my at the time close friend break into my account and steal several of my domains, including https://strategywiki.org. This was while I was on an overseas study and couldn't regularly check in. GoDaddy gave me no recourse to dispute.
He had server access because I trusted him. He wasn't supposed to have access to my domain account, and I didn't share my credentials.
I had another friend on the account because I was paying for his domain and wanted to let him administer DNS. They conspired together and were able to leverage this access and the lack of account ACLs to transfer everything away.
This was well over a decade ago.
They never invested in StrategyWiki, so it never realized the vision I had for the site. I had started to pay contributors and invest in content to bootstrap.
This guy came from the MediaWiki purge of video game guides and felt like he owned and deserved the site, despite the fact that I had created most of the original content. He was ten years older, well paid, and threatened me with a lawsuit. I was a college kid and couldn't do anything.
I learned a hard lesson. It's stuck with me.
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#108Since this seems very common, I would suggest use GoDaddy to search for Domains, whenever you are sure, that you never would buy it. Let them eat their own dog shit.
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#109This 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.
I don't think people in the tech world use them. People in the non-tech world trying to do tech (e.g. small business owners) use them because they are the only hosting company and domain registrar with name brand recognition.
Re: Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
#110Amusingly, if you query GoDaddy for "godaddy-is-an-ongoing-criminal-enterprise.com", they claim it is "unavailable", although it's not in "whois" and other registrars say it is available. I was curious to see if GoDaddy would actually register that domain for themselves. Network Solutions used to do that, which was really annoying.