Breach of Contract Reported for FREEBSD.ORG

Michael Powell nightrecon at verizon.net
Fri Oct 17 04:02:59 PDT 2008


Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
 
>> [snip]
>> 
>> ICANN requires registrars to verify the domain info once a year. I just
>> went through this with GoDaddy. I think the registrars see this as an
>> opportunity to market services. Different registrars bungle their
>> marketing effort in different ways. GoDaddy sent me instructions on what
>> to do in order to correct errors, but had absolutely nothing on how to
>> proceed if the information was correct. So I viewed this as something
>> they could take advantage of in order to get me to their site for a "hard
>> sell" campaign.
> 
> So how do you folks who comply with ICANN's requirement deal with this?
> http://blog.forret.com/2004/12/domain-registry-of-america-scam/ -- This
> organisation is now known as "Domain Renewal Group", by the way.

What is described in the above URI looks very very similar to what I saw
when I first went to check up on the ICANN whois confirmation email I
received from GoDaddy. Initially they seemed to be touting their
new "TDNAM" service, which I gather is some form of bulk auction. GoDaddy
took over the domains from the RegisterFly debacle so they have a few
million domains to monetize. A perfect example of "registrar gone bad".

At first I was alarmed - "Why am I in some danger of losing my domains?" is
what I thought. As I went deeper into it by examining my account, I
confirmed that I indeed had "Auto Renew" on, so it would just bill my
credit card even if I took no action. However, I tend to do it manually
just so I'm satisfied it's done. So in the end this was just a "hard sell"
for a new service they wanted to push, for which I have no use. There must
have been complaints because when I just went looking for what I saw a few
weeks ago it seems to have vanished.

 
> I'm quite interested in knowing; it might be tolerable if you've only
> one domain, but if you're a hosting provider and have 100?
> 

I'm not qualified for this because these days I only carry two .com domains.
At work we are a large .org entity and we have an entire group of people
whose sole function is to deal with this. Relatively low down in the
hierarchy my DNS servers are only slaves to those higher up. It is a
function handled by others and is out of my hands.

But a scam is a scam and the first thing which needs to occur is recognizing
a scam when you see it. Most legitimate businesses recognize the need for
large scale management and more than likely market some form of service of
assistance. It's a matter of trade-off of the fees they charge versus
whether it is worth it to you time/money wise to pay for the service. For
something like this I would only consider a service of this type offerred
by the registrar I'm already dealing with. And even then, I'd double check
behind them as I had time.

Back in the day I worked 2 blocks from Network Solutions and had a friend
that worked there as a DBA. So I had the proverbial "someone you know"
insider access. He no longer works for them and moved to California some
years ago. But it goes to the point of the working relationship you
maintain with your registrar. I'm fairly cynical so I tend to believe large
companies only pay attention to large accounts and have a certain tendency
to ignore and forget to service the little guy. In that vein it's a "YMMV",
depends on who represents you on the other end of the circuit.   

-Mike
 




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