That peaked my curiosity to check who actually owned the website.
When we ran whois on the domain. The name that pops up is Wild West Domains, LLC [http://www.wildwestdomains.com]
When you look further, Godaddy's CEO is the CEO of Wild West Domains. Lot of the staff are part of this LLC.
Just wondering what is it all about?
Somebody at Godaddy probably did this before you thought of the domain in the past, which is why its in their network and rejecting bids. It knows the incoming bids. It's sitting on it until someone like you came along.
I use porkbun, no idea if they've stayed course in honesty but I believe so.
Also if you're looking at GoDaddy era webhosts, they all own most of the market. Bluehost, Hostgator (EIG), etc are all grouped with a ton of other webhosts for that low end $10 market.
So, stay away from those.
Registrars are a scam, too. And stupid tlds.
I'm not actually sure that they are not involved in sniping, or even that others are involved. But it's my best bet on it.
Is there actually evidence of this happening? I always thought this was an urban legend.
1. go to GoDaddy
2. search for a bunch of domain names that are loosely plausible but also so niche no one really wants them. Make sure you find a bunch of ".com" that are not registered
3. come back a week later. I can guarantee you one is now registered.
Waited the cancellation period (I think it was 5 or 7 days for a registrar to cancel a registration back in those days) and the domain became available (from a different registrar).
Seems silly we deify one DNS pay to play scheme when we can easily point to alternate DNS. As it stands the world has a naming scheme monetized and owned through no merit or logic based system, just entrenchment.
.onion kind of does this with privacy. .eth (ew) kind of does too, but critical mass is unlikely.
There have been alternate roots, with alternate TLDs, but adoption is nearly zero. .onion works a little bit because it's part of TOR. I'm not convinced .eth works, but maybe it's somewhat viable???
For everything else, a mediocre domain name can usually be found at low cost, and if it's too much, there are many domains that offer free subdomains, although you might not like the neighborhood.
You're free to use alternative roots. This doesn't quite address the structure of domain registration (the ICANN regime, perhaps?) because that's a different thing altogether, but kind of related. kind of.
I personally do not want to live in a world where there are competing roots. You would have massive fragmentation, confusion, poisoning, spoofing, severe trust issues. It's not going to happen.
EDIT: oh shit, it actually is happening. sad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Internet_Law
[0] https://www.nsa.gov/About/Cybersecurity-Collaboration-Center...
Just look at the names; “Go Daddy” and “Wild West”.. It’s alarming already.
If so, and if you can be bothered to complain hard enough, they'll usually refund you. They know that they're running a scam.
It could be worse. They've been known to snipe domains from under the noses of their users, and their recently closed "domain backorder" service was an almost insultingly blatant scam -- a sort of "free money hack IRL" where they were taking advantage of rubes -- it never worked.
That's not strictly true. I used it a long while ago on a vanity domain just to see if it would work. It did. They snagged the domain for me.
Thats the scam. They are acting both as broker and seller without transparently revealing the relationship.
It is like, you go to buy a house, the broker says the advertised price is 2 million, i recommend paying 3.2 million and then you realise the broker was the owner of the house.
And, even if they accepted the bid, I don't see the issue of not disclosing who owns it. Anyone who is selling something is 'suggesting' (setting) a price, so it wouldn't really matter if they disclosed they owned it or not because they are free to set the price. Why would you care if they owned it or not?
Do I understand this correctly? Maybe someone has a bridge they want to sell me
The core issue is that DNS is a money factory that exists because of their first mover advantage and incumbency factor. There is no other reason why someone else couldn't have been in charge. It's like those academic publishers in the age of the internet (though they had legitimate reasons to exist before the internet). Their justification for existence is that they already exist. Such systems are ripe for exploitation and corruption. And there is no reason someone won't do it when they get a chance.
A naming system is necessary and a centralized naming system is certainly costly to maintain. But, we could have sacrificed the centralized control in favor of low cost of operation and virtually free identities. (The sacrifice is due to Zooko's triangle). The identities won't be that easy to remember - but we already have a similar system where that issue is solved. We have nearly random phone numbers that we map to pet names in our contacts list. It would have avoided another avenue of unnecessary economic exploitation on the internet.
And I mean sure, godaddy sucks. I get it. I don't use them. But a customer of mine has all his domains there, and it just works. That doesn't make them better in my eyes. I work with people who helped build godaddy- and yes, we giggle and rudely point at them for what they've become. But a scam? That's a stretch to me. and what the OP posted about was not a scam.
Whether it is legal or not is an entirely different question.
The process was:
* They missed the expiration warning (their fault)
* On the date of expiry, Godaddy immediately "sold" the domain name to a subsidiary called Afternic
* Once there, it was auctioned off to a company that forwards traffic to an Indonesian gambling site
No amount of phone calls, emails or any customer support could get their domain back. They suggested the domain could be re-claimed by going through a Godaddy broker, but the cost was extortionate and even though they were willing to pay, it still didn't go through (I don't have those details).
A customer-friendly approach to a domain expiry with no email response would be to deactivate the DNS records for a week before taking further action. Any active domains would notice the mistake pretty quickly and remedy it. The immediate on-sale of the domain is a pure cash-grab with no care given to customers.
Someone has described a similar experience here: https://drawne.com/godaddy-afternic-scam/
In this case, the solution is to always make sure your DNS contact email address is operating, but these people were not IT professionals and their configuration mistake cost them a huge part of their business.
Godaddy domain business is like you make a backorder to buy domain. Someone immedidetely will buy domain when it becomes available and it automatically gets listed on Godaddy auctions. I think its planned something fishy.
The fact that people are still using them is disappointing.
———-
also for pedantry’s sake, it’s “piqued” your curiosity
Wonder how much they pay to register each year? Brought it up to MGMT but they are equally clueless
