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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

#231

Post by gzread »

mike_d wrote: post #217
Animats wrote: post #116

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®

I own a domain registrar. Personally (not our official position), I would never try to bring a trademark into this type of dispute. Once you make a trademark claim the domain gets locked to prevent any further changes and you get directed to file a UDRP. We will then act based on the ruling, which could take months. Same for trying to send "intimidating lawyer letters" (or having your attorney contact us at all). Out…

> We will then act based on the ruling, which could take months.

That's fine, you're paying for all lost business revenue during that time since it was obviously caused by your gross negligence (liability for which cannot be waived). Hmm. Might be in your interest to undo the mistake quickly?

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

#232

Post by gzread »

Beijinger wrote: post #172
Animats wrote: post #116

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®

Trademarks mean Bullshit. Facebook closed a site of mine besides having a registered and valid (US) trademark that precedes everything.

A trademark means nobody but you has the right to use the name in commerce. It doesn't mean Facebook is forced to give you a site (whatever that means).

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

#233

Post by nikolay »

akersten wrote: post #190
nikolay wrote: post #183

GoDaddy stole several domains from me. And they've acknowledged it. It was through an Afternic exploit. They still haven't fixed it, even though I've disclosed it. They returned the two domains that were stolen from me, but refused to provide me with a list of other stolen domains, so now I'm trying to find this from renewals, as I have thousands of domain names with them. I do not trust them, so I created a small ut…

> I do not trust them, so I Why does this sentence end in anything other than "immediately transferred them to another registrar"?

5,000 domain names at $10+/domain... They still give me the best price, plus their domain brokerage service is the best.

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

#236

Post by kalleboo »

gzread wrote: post #212
jolux wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cmon, this is the guy that was running a shady online casino which was tanking Cloudflare’s IP reputation, completely different.

Cloudflare didn't give them the option to quit hosting with CF and port their domains out. It held the domains hostage because the domains were registered through CF.

Are you talking about a different article? The one linked says they only had their NS pointed at CloudFlare and the domains weren't registered there

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

#237

Post by deaux »

I'm super surprised that not a single comment here is bothered by this straight-out-of-Opus article. I guess the shared fury at GoDaddy is enough to overrule that emotion, or something. Because there are sure such comments on other articles like these.

The AI slop style makes it so annoying to read interesting content. It's sad that I have to resort to it but it made me just run it through an LLM again to remove the slop style, which did make it readable again.

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

#238

Post by deaux »

Strom wrote: post #99
amluto wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read farther down, it’s obviously an inside job in the incompetent, not malicious, sense. Their employee did not do anything remotely resembling following procedures, misread an email to an outrageous degree, and transferred the wrong domain .

As I read it I couldn't help but envision this being a simple case of LLM-automated support going wrong. The mistakenly transferred domain was in the e-mail that asked for a transfer.

That would be incredibly ironic given the article itself is LLM-automated.

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

#239

Post by deaux »

Animats wrote: post #213
donmcronald wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Where can you register online? In Canada you basically have to hire a lawyer and the wait time for issuance is crazy. The backlog peaked at a 4 year wait after Covid. I’d love to be able to register an trademark online.

Register a US trademark on line here: [1] Current wait times: [2] About 4 months to first reply, 10 months to issue. I've registered ANIMATS, DOWNSIDE, and SITETRUTH. It's not hard. [1] https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/apply [2] https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/application-timeline

So it has to be a US trademark? Even for businesses outside of the US? That seems a bit of a racket. Unless it depends on the TLD and you're saying it because it's a .com?

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

#240

Post by deaux »

crazygringo wrote: post #17
PunchyHamster wrote: post #2

I have no reason why would anyone use godaddy 10 years ago let alone today

It's literally the largest registrar in the world, by a large margin. When you're a business and want something reliable, picking the most popular provider is usually a strategy that works decently well. They're more likely to have established processes that work for all sorts of cases. That's what makes this particular story so egregious. Domains are a very funny business. I can't think of anything so crucial to bus…

> When you're a business and want something reliable, picking the most popular provider is usually a strategy that works decently well.

For offline goods, definitely. For digital services, 10+ years ago, definitely. For digital services, in 2026, it's a bad strategy even if you're a business and want something reliable.

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