Re: A question about Godaddy

> That's not 100% true. Ask Mike Filsame from PayDotCom.coma and
> InstantBuzz.com.

Read his rant. It was totally unjustified. He bought a domain that wasn't properly transferred to him. The previous owner went incommunicado during a spam run by an affiliate. GoDaddy took a spam report, and per their policy, emailed the site owner for an explanation and to get the spamming affiliate terminated. After a few days of NO REPLY, they disabled the domain.

From their point of view, the domain owner was ignoring their legitimate investigation, and the only way to get their attention was the shutdown.

Then Mike called in to straighten it all out, but he was not the registered domain owner! He could have been some kook trying to hijack the domain so GoDaddy quite properly waited to hear from the registered domain owner.

That Mike has a no-spam policy posted is irrelevant. Many, many spam-friendly operations have a no-spam policy posted to placate the public, but it's never enforced. It's only if the provider actually NUKES the spamming affiliate that you know their true intentions.

> I don't know anyone personally but I do know of about 6 people who went
> through this "investigation". Like Mike Filsame, Godaddy totally
> yanks the domain from your control during htis "investigation".

Only if you ignore their initial email for a period of days. As a domain owner, you are REQUIRED to keep a good email address on record, and you as a business owner have to keep up with it, or delegate it to someone if you're on a cruise or something.

It's not acceptable to leave a spam report open for over a week.

And I know the Godaddy rules of engagement do not allow them to yank a domain DURING the investigation as long as the owner responds to their email. Find me a posting where a domain was lost DURING an investigation of a first time spammer, or please stop repeating this urban legend. A repeat spamming incident, after the domain owner agreed to stop spamming or harboring spamming affiliates, SHOULD result in the domain getting disabled. Would you have Godaddy coddle repeat offenders? That would end up getting THEM blacklisted.

> Then, once the investigation is over - if you are guilty, you lose hte
> domain.

As you should. Are you claiming that spam-friendly operations should be allowed to thrive?

> If you are innocent then you have to pay what I call the ransom
> which has been reported to cary for unknown reasons.

If you're running a domain with an affiliate program, and the affiliates might spam, then you're not totally "innocent". Such a domain owner benefits and profits from spamming affiliates. So GoDaddy has a rule that such a domain has to have an abuse reporting mechanism (a working "abuse" email address) and that it be staffed adequately. And a domain with a spam complaint against it has to take action against the spamming affiliate, and commit to do the same in the future. That they didn't do this from day 1, and GoDaddy abuse staff had to get involved to enforce this civilised rule, entitles them to apply a fee to pay for the staff time.

> Pleeeeez don't tell me that that is not assuming guilt before innocence.

Were you aware that Godaddy's emails had been ignored before the domain(s) got disabled? What would you have them do? How long would you have them keep an investigation open?

> I
> kno wGD can do things however they want, but don't tell me that is
> innocent until proven guilty. It's not. The ransom alone is a dead
> giveaway it's not.

The fee, plus a requirement that the domain owner "get with the program" and have a working abuse address and to boot their spamming affiliates, seems quite reasonable to me. To register a domain with a bogus, unread, or abandoned email address is contributory negligence. Anybody in that situation brought on part of the problem themselves.

The Internet *needs* the ability to quickly contact domain owners to resolve abuse issues - spammers, phishers, etc.

> Look around the net. There are forum topics started by the
> "victims" all over the place.