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GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

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Re: GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

#111

Post by talkingtab »

You are not helpless in these situations. You have a legal right to take action, appearing pro se, so it cost you almost nothing. Our legal system has degenerated into a medieval class system of trial by combat. Corporations can sue you, small corporations and users do not have a symmetric ability. It is like challenging a (dark) knight with armor and a very sharp sword to combat. You will lose. But here is the thing, if people start challenging, it is going to cost them a lot of money to field that knight. Think of this like drone warfare against Russian tanks. Be the drone. If GoDaddy has to field a lawyer for stuff like this, they will have the financial motivation to provide support.

While you could use small claims court, you have to be careful about your ability to appeal and to obtain evidence. In this case you are clearly aggrieved and AI should be able to help you draft a cease-and-desist letter.

Oh, and I have to include a disclaimer that this is not legal advise, that you should pay lots of money to get advice, etc or some dark knight will show up at MY door.

Do not be helpless. You have the right to take legal action. Knowing how to file a case pro se is a useful skill that every citizen should have. (Oops, that is not legal advice either!)

Re: GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

#112

Post by miladyincontrol »

ryukoposting wrote: post #92
FlamingMoe wrote: post #26

He mentions these 3: "- Every email address that exists out in the world is now wrong. - Every piece of marketing material is now incorrect. - All of the SEO is gone." but it seems to miss even the biggest one, which is that you are effectively locked out of any online business accounts, your bank, your crm, anything that says "we noticed an unusual login, please enter the code we just sent to your email to verify th…

Yep. Binding 2FA flows to email is risky business for a lot of reasons, but registrar incompetence might be the spookiest thing of all.

Same reason I dislike SMS based 2FA, or worse SMS/email based 1FA codes.

You dont truly own your cell number or domain. Meanwhile passkeys are certainly hardware I own, likewise my TOTP codes are stored and calculated locally.

Re: GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

#113

Post by conartist6 »

omnifischer wrote: post #24

Wait few hours. Some CTO or PR guru will post a message here. - We are totally revamping our processes. This never happened out of incompetence. Humans make mistakes. We are contacting the client for 1 year free renewal - waiving. Will mail a coupon code. We consider this issue closed.

What even is "security" anyway? You don't know. I don't know. It's probably a made-up concept.

Re: GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

#114

Post by II2II »

merlindru wrote: post #67
tedggh wrote: post #52

Likely an inside job. I had a similar experience with AWS where my account was compromised despite the fact that I had all the proper security features enabled. It was later discovered internal contractors were responsible. But up to that point AWS blamed the issue on me with no proof. A call to the AG office in my state got the ball rolling and initiated an investigation that finally got a manager to take the case s…

but why? why would an insider put the wrong domain into a strangers account that has no interest in using the domain and went out of her way to give it back to the rightful owners?

If I had to make a guess: the incorrect domain was transferred by mistake. Remember, the person who the domain was transferred to was trying to recover a domain. The employees went out of their way to avoid giving the domain back to the rightful owners because the individuals involved did not realize it was a mistake since the vast majority claims they receive about improperly transferred domains are people trying to hijack domains. Either their policies don't acknowledge exceptions, or employees were just trying to cover their ass in case the author was someone trying to hijack a domain.

I certainly don't blame the author being upset and venting. I don't blame them for pointing out that there are problems with the dispute resolution process process. That said, I think they should also realize the registrar also has its own set of challenges to face. In this case, one of those challenges is to protect their customers from having their domain hijacked by a bad actor. The author's behavior most likely had those bad actor vibes, even if it was unintentional.

Re: GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

#115

Post by miladyincontrol »

naikrovek wrote: post #88
trollbridge wrote: post #27

At the risk of sounding snarky; Last Saturday afternoon one of his client’s domains vanished from his GoDaddy account. Lee is one of the most competent IT guys I know. 'Competent' and 'client's domains [hosted on] GoDaddy' don't go together.

Why not? GoDaddy is a valid domain registrar. The customer had dual MFA set up. The customer did all the right things. I’ve never heard of Godaddy making this kind of egregious mistake before. I’ve heard of some doozies, sure, but nothing like this. Don’t blame the victim. “It’s their fault they got robbed, they left their door unlocked” is not a valid response to a situation like that or like this. The robber still…

Maybe you havent, but I and others certainly have heard of this kind of "mistake" aplenty from them. They're infamously bad for this kind of nonsense let alone their other more predatory practices such as frontrunning domain registrations.

Re: GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

#116

Post by Animats »

Register your domain as a trademark. It costs a few hundred dollars, and can be done online. This gives you stronger rights with ICANN, against anybody who illicitly acquired the domain, against typosquatters, the registrar, and the courts. You can send intimidating lawyer letters, and quickly escalate from the registrar's support department to lawyer-to-lawyer phone calls.

ANIMATS®

Re: GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

#118

Post by SpecialistK »

bdn_ wrote: post #94
nabbed wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Either way, GoDaddy is not the first choice for a new domain in 2026. Off the top of your head, what would be a decent one?

Porkbun. Their prices are very reasonable and their support team is consistently responsive and helpful. Honestly, even if their pricing was higher I would still choose to use them because it's clear their goal is to maintain a useful product, not infinite growth andendshittification

Interestingly, Cloudflare (don't shoot me for mentioning the name, HN!) identify Porkbun as "GoDaddy-Porkbun" but I don't know the relationship.

Edit: "Top Level Design [Porkbun owners] was the domain name registry for several top-level domains including .wiki, .ink and .design, until the company sold these domains to GoDaddy Registry in April 2023" --Wikipedia

Re: GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

#119

Post by gzread »

0_-_0 wrote: post #97
nine_k wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all the publicity GoDaddy has received over the last 10 years or so, I wonder why anybody reasonable would deal with them any more. Maybe the prices are irresistibly low, IDK.

they are not inexplicably low -- any rational person sees that any low prices are one year intro deals that revert to excessive after the first year. We have always hated working with them, and have moved all clients to cloudflare.

You moved from the worst registrar to the second worst registrar. Cloudflare will call you up one day demanding an immediate payment of $150k and holding your domains hostage if you don't comply.

Re: GoDaddy gave a domain to a stranger without any documentation

#120

Post by walrus01 »

Doohickey-d wrote: post #98
rrr_oh_man wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's good about MarkMonitor? All I see is Gartner-friendly buzzwords and AI generated "business people".

They specialize in domains management for businesses who consider their domain to be _very_ important. Think Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Wikipedia... (all of those are listed as clients on the wiki page) As in "pay a lot of money", and we'll dedicate someone to your domain who makes sure that "giving a domain to a stranger without any documents" will _never_ happen.

a number of the largest companies that used to be 'clients' of markmonitor have now basically become their own domain registrars and have a direct relationship with ICANN. Amazon for instance. It's curious that google was one and has offloaded it to squarespace.
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