Godaddy abuse department strikes again

Godaddy may suck at hosting (I mean, people host with Godaddy??!!) but they are great for domains ;)

same situation as before... it was hosted at the registrar and the domain got locked down.

It is unwise to host with your registrar. Period.

The guy really got locked because of bad behaviour on the phone, from what I read. Not the best way to handle your registrar when they call. They need liability protection -- which is why they asked for that email -- and this guy just chewed up their time. If he pays the $50 they still lost money handling the issue for him (the complaint).

Still waiting for a test case where a registrar locks up a domain like this for similar reasons, when the site is hosted elsewhere. That will be news.

I guess I'm missing the point. The guy's complaining because his hosting provider nailed him for violating their TOS? He plays stupid about spam, but I didn't have any problem finding his Usnenet spam. Is he claiming somebody else sent the spam?

"Still waiting for a test case where a registrar locks up a domain like this for similar reasons, when the site is hosted elsewhere. That will be news."

That is exactly what they do. The registrar redirects the dns and demands $200 first, then $50 to transfer away from them. Regardless of whether your site is hosted with them or not.

I imagine that the locking down and charging to reinstate must all be in the contract you agree to before you agree to host with them. It pays to read those things now and then!

Yeah, but they rang him - what is the point of ringing someone to say 'we wont talk to you'? Of course he was annoyed.
If you do choose to ring someone but require a written record, you have a conversation and then politely ask them to confirm everything discussed in an email - their approach, as recorded, is just poor business practice, IMHO.

This was also pointed out in the other thread, but I think the point both here and in the other thread may have been missed altogether ...

That is exactly what they do. The registrar redirects the dns and demands $200 first, then $50 to transfer away from them. Regardless of whether your site is hosted with them or not.

According to the poster, GoDaddy is also locking down domains that are not hosted with them. Which, if accurate, is a horse of an entirely different color.

Can anyone shed more light on this?

There was another recent thread that discussed this:

Blog Spamming *for* Competitors
SEOBook says:

Greg also goes on to state why he does not like GoDaddy (killing sites for spamming without evidence) and predicts that competitive sabotage via blogs will be huge in 2006.

From the referenced article:

That means that if I were your typical “spam nazi” blogger, I would have gone straight to GoDaddy and reported the spam. And doing that, would have probably resulted in MCP Media’s site getting shut down.

(I hope I am reading this all wrong.)

GoDaddy has a history of this. This is why I moved anything I had with them away to Moniker. I know my domains are safe and free from potential hijacking concerns.
Methinks they thrive on the controversy.

Now that would be a good story....

I have my own dedicated server AND 2900+ domains with GoDaddy and have ALWAYS had excellent service, great user interface and prices.

For me, they are the best. I will say I have heard good things about moniker, fabulous and enom for domains. Hosting, I don't know. I did my homework and got one with GoDaddy.

(no, I don't work for GoDaddy:-)

get godaddy to remove the domain above you.

"GoDaddy is also locking down domains that are not hosted with them"

Like I said, they do. We have our own dns, own servers, own admins and Gdaddy locked several of our domains at once. In the end it was $600 or something to "transfer them away"

Take Your Pick Of GoDaddy Shutting Down For Spam Complaints

Off memory: mainly reports of being shut down for spam complaints on opt-in newsletters as well as spam containing the domain in the email body, not the header info.

Not hosted with GoDaddy.

Maybe you should just stop spamming,or get a spam-friendly domain registration service.

There's a serious justice issue here if GoDaddy shuts things down without seriously investigating whether the site owner is actually guilty by any reasonable standard.

Some users complain about spam when it's something they ASKED for. An even bigger concern is that GoDaddy's behaviour lends itself to competitive sabotage.

Something that is ironic here. We had two domains that did not autorenew yesterday as the card did no go through, so I had to call. After my convesation I got a customer satisfaction survey in my mail without their permission. By their definition this is spam and they could ban your domain for the same thing. Heh, assholes.

So far we have someone who hosted with GoDaddy and someone else (with that search provided by Terry SA) who uses the Godaddy Domains By Proxy service getting in trouble... so any evidence of Godaddy doing this to someone who just uses Godaddy to register a domain?

You would think this would be widespread problem - most spam these days has fake return e-mail addresses from legitimate website domains (registered at Godaddy) that have no connection to the spam....

I reckon it's restricted to those hosted with GoDaddy or using the Domains By Proxy service....

Nutsandbolts. Read above. It's been pointed out many times that the issue is not hosting. It's Godaddy as a registrar. We've had proxy domains and non proxy domains held to ransome by godaddy. 20 domains held because of a single email they deemed spam.

On the same account? If so it's because you had the Proxy service and it affected the rest of your account as I was saying - it only seems to affect those using the proxy or hosting service.

Still stupid, of course, but it's not like this is a widespread problem affecting webmasters who just register domains at GoDaddy.

it only seems to affect those using the proxy or hosting service

Not questioning you, nutsandbolts, but is this the experience of anyone else in this thread who's had the same problem with GoDaddy?