godaddy, nodaddy, slowdaddy - some facts you might need

In early 2007, Go Daddy canceled the domain registration for FamilyAlbum.com, claiming that the owner of the domain did not keep his e-mail address on file with Go Daddy and in the whois database up-to-date. Although ICANN policy allows a registrar to delete a domain registration for inaccurate information in the whois database, the registrant had a correct phone number and postal address. Furthermore, GoDaddy did not delete the domain name and instead sold the registration to another GoDaddy customer. There is debate in the internet community as to whether Go Daddy took the correct action. (says wikipedia)

The site that broke the story, however, suggests that there might be a very seedy side to things. "I just heard from GoDaddy that the cost the new owner paid for the domain was $18.99. This is the price of a backorder, not a regular registration. Perhaps this is how it worked: Person tries e-mailing domain owner with Whois information and e-mail bounces. Person backorders domain and then sends complaint to GoDaddy. GoDaddy tries to contact only via e-mail, which bounces. Domain is cancelled and given to person with backorder." domainnamewire.com

From this we can work out that the Go Daddy system can probably be abused to obtain valuable domain names so long as you can find fault with the whois listing. The process would be find good domains with whois faults use the back ordering service on them and then you and three of four friends bombard Go Daddy with complaints. When Go Daddy take the domain away from the current owner you automatically get hold of it.

If you are especially evil you could put up a basic article site and then put the domain up for auction. The chances are the true owners will want to purchase it back and might pay a lot of money for it.

Ideally Go Daddy should have checks in place to ensure that such conflict of interest hijacking attempts do not happen but (unless things have changed) this is not the case.

In 2007, several websites critical of the human rights abuses in People's Republic of China were shut down by Go Daddy, possibly under the pressure of the PRC government. Go Daddy denied any political involvement in the shutdown. (wikipedia)

Reporters Without Borders asked why "Reporters Without Borders today called on US web hosting provider Go Daddy to explain why it suddenly withdrew hosting for several Chinese sites specialising in human rights in China. According to a report on the news website Boxun , around 10 Chinese human rights sites were suspended without explanation on 17 August." [LINK]

Go Daddy claimed the sites were "used to attack other servers". However the question that remains unanswered (as far as I can tell) is did Go Daddy make any effort to confirm these abuse complaints? The debate remains largely unsatisfied (to my mind).

Does this mean that all one would need to do to shut down a competitor hosted by Go Daddy is to get a few friends to make (false) complaints about their site?

How safe is Go Daddy for freedom of speech?

At the beginning of July 2007 Go Daddy chose to stop supporting .uk domain names. According to sources inside Nominet Go Daddy were never members of Nominet and secured the UK based domain names via a third party. It seems that they no longer do business with that third party and on 17th of July 2007 the nomain names were moved to a German based company.

However this change has led to domains expiring while being reported as renewed. A page entitled Godaddy Dot UK Emergency has been posted to a server without any other apparent content simply to highlight this issue.

Unless Go Daddy can correct this issue they will have cost many people their domains. All that to focus on the more profitable dot coms.