8 ms·

I have no proof of anything GoDaddy specifically does. A while back I came across some of my archives that mentioned a BBS name that was popular in the past. T

by pgrote 8y ago

I have no proof of anything GoDaddy specifically does. A while back I came across some of my archives that mentioned a BBS name that was popular in the past. Thinking it would be neat to own the domain name of the company that went out of business, I went to GoDaddy and checked. It was available awesome. Got distracted, came back an hour later and it was no longer available, but was at auction. My first suspicion is nothing nefarious happened. I could have misread available vs auction, but I don't think so. I might have mistyped the domain name, but I don't think so. Something didn't feel right. A few days later I checked another domain using whois through icaan. No resolution. Available. Pop over to GoDaddy and do the same thing ... check name is available. As a test, I wait an hour and come back to the name at auction. I cannot explain what happened it except maybe GoDaddy's name check leaks or someone had the exact same name ideas when I had them. Again, this was years ago and am unsure if it still occurs.

Wowfunhappy 8y ago
I also have no proof, but I have heard enough other stories like this one that I firmly belief something is going on. Using GoDaddy to check if a domain is available is a good way to make that domain become unavailable.
strict9 8y ago
Drop to a bash shell and do this: $ whois example.com It's what I've always turned to first for availability. Super fast and less chance of a middleman grabbing it because you expressed interest.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dewey 8y ago
  Doesn’t give you the price though which is one of the things people are looking for when searching for a domain and if it’s not one of the popular TLDs where you already know a ballpark figure.
  - jiveturkey 8y ago
    You misunderstand. Command line 'whois' is how you search for a domain initially. If it is available, the price is the standard price for a domain in that TLD. If it's already owned, you learn that also. Then you can visit www or visit the registrar to see if it is for sale and for how much. You can also search on domains.google.com. They are known to not engage in these practices.
    - dewey 8y ago
      No I didn't. You are saying the same thing as I did but if it's a TLD where you don't know a ballpark figure you'll have to look it up somewhere to see the price which is some registrar like GoDaddy for a lot of people (especially those that don't know much about what's going on in the background). Availability is not the only factor that people look at when they first decide on a domain. Especially if it's a side project / startup and not a bigger project where it doesn't matter if it's 9.99 / year or 500 / year.
      - antsar 8y ago
        Ok, so use ‘whois mydomain.tld’ to check availability, then google “.tld price” or “otherdomain.tld price” to check the cost without identifying your domain.
simlevesque 8y ago
If anyone needs to do the same thing, use this one: https://whois.icann.org https://whois.icann.org
- clairity 8y ago
  unfortunately icann uses google for captcha.
  - lwansbrough 8y ago
    Are you a robot?
    - sigsergv 8y ago
      If you enable anti-fingeprinting option in firefox you basically forced to spend minutes on google captcha training minefield. And sometimes you never pass it, it just refresh tiles indefinitely.
furyg3 8y ago
I also had this experience once a few years ago (2011 or 2012). I found it extremely suspicious and spent a few days running a some experiments. I came up with a list of domains and watched what happened after a GoDaddy search: some (but not all) of my domains were suddenly purchased by a GoDaddy organization. Literally all of the ones that were purchased were available again after a few days (I assume this has to do with the grace period). Since then I don't type any candidate domain into any registrar / online tool unless I'm ready to purchase.
- jonhohle 8y ago
  This is called domain kiting or "tasting"[0]. The founder of Go Daddy decried the idea a decade ago[1]. Of course this was after running their own kiting operation for some time using ad placement via Google Ad Sense for Domains (no content necessary, just a domain name). I know, because I worked on the app that serviced 20M domains and fed metrics back to the team that decided to buy or release. The project was shuttered after some employee abuse (buying the domains for themselves) and shortly before Bob declared the moral high ground. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting 1 - https://web.archive.org/web/20070707203924/http://www.bobparsons.com/WhyyoucantgetthedomainnameyouwantGoDaddyrescuesRegisterflycustomers.html https://web.archive.org/web/20070707203924/http://www.bobpar...
  - DonHopkins 8y ago
    Did Bob Parsons declare the moral high ground while standing on the back of an elephant he murdered? https://gawker.com/5787676/meet-godaddys-ridiculous-elephant-killing-ceo https://gawker.com/5787676/meet-godaddys-ridiculous-elephant...
- behringer 8y ago
  You should find a registrar that does not engage in this behavior. I use gandi.net. I pay almost twice as much as the cheapest registrars charge but I never have to worry about how they are going to treat me.
Arqu 8y ago
This is a known trick of many registrars, but GoDaddy has to be the leader. Happened to me on two occasions as well. Recently it's supposed to be a bit cracked down on as they have strict quotas on how many domains they can reserve without outright buying. As for my case, it was a couple years ago where they would also host a small site redirecting to the auction. It states that it is owned by some XYZ entity, but if you peel enough layers of the onion scheme you can get to their name. You can read more about the practice and measures here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running
PedroBatista 8y ago
The same thing happened to me some years ago! It was a trendy .com domain that was available, naively I didn't grab it right away, 2 days latter I went to purchase it, it was taken..
dkonofalski 8y ago
I can. I used to work at GoDaddy and they have an "Executive Domain Team" that is basically just a fancy word for a group of people that assist domain kiters. If you search for a domain on GoDaddy's whois, they put a hold on it and publish the list to potential domain "investors" (read: kiters) who then have the option of purchasing it out from under you. These are people that literally invest thousands of dollars to buy up domains on the off chance that they can resell them at a profit. Anytime there's a sunrise period on a new domain TLD, these guys go in and buy all the popular and common names wholesale and they have a dedicated person that works at GoDaddy to help them do this. Anytime you have a question about whether something is a scam or not, just ask yourself where the money is. In this case, it's in GoDaddy making money off of any time a domain name is sold, re-sold, auctioned, or if it changes hands. It's where the majority of their money made comes from, outside of services where people just don't know that better alternatives exist.
- Pica_soO 8y ago
  Should easily be blasted with denial of service? Proxy- Bot that generates fency sounding company names, and searches for them on go-daddy. Two months of heavy investing into the the eternal resting domains - and the relations should sour. End of (hi)story.
- joshuatalb 8y ago
  This sounds exactly like what happened to me. I had a few .london domains in one of the early stages of the TLD launch. Sat there for about 60 days, and then all of a sudden - gone. GD support were useless and I lost out on a few quality domain names. Never used them again since. In fact, I don’t even think I got my money back!
gmiller123456 8y ago
This isn't limited to Godaddy. A friend of mine tried to register a domain name on Network Solutions way back when they were still called that. He typed in his credit card number wrong. By the time he got an e-mail stating the transaction failed, someone else had already registered his domain.
- galfarragem 8y ago
  My impression is that a domain checker works as a password checker: each domain/password inserted gets listed in a database. In case of domains, a simple script is enough to skim them and get the 'gold'. In case of passwords, even if the password was unique, after checking it won't be anymore..
- iamnothere 8y ago
  I seem to remember a time (probably over a decade ago) where Netsol actually admitted this, tried to defend it, then eventually backed down and said that they would stop doing it. I've always used command-line whois to check for available domains since then, never had one snatched up either.

by pgrote 8y ago

Wowfunhappy 8y ago

I also have no proof, but I have heard enough other stories like this one that I firmly belief something is going on. Using GoDaddy to check if a domain is available is a good way to make that domain become unavailable.

strict9 8y ago

Drop to a bash shell and do this: $ whois example.com It's what I've always turned to first for availability. Super fast and less chance of a middleman grabbing it because you expressed interest.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dewey 8y ago
Doesn’t give you the price though which is one of the things people are looking for when searching for a domain and if it’s not one of the popular TLDs where you already know a ballpark figure.
- jiveturkey 8y ago
  You misunderstand. Command line 'whois' is how you search for a domain initially. If it is available, the price is the standard price for a domain in that TLD. If it's already owned, you learn that also. Then you can visit www or visit the registrar to see if it is for sale and for how much. You can also search on domains.google.com. They are known to not engage in these practices.
  - dewey 8y ago
    No I didn't. You are saying the same thing as I did but if it's a TLD where you don't know a ballpark figure you'll have to look it up somewhere to see the price which is some registrar like GoDaddy for a lot of people (especially those that don't know much about what's going on in the background). Availability is not the only factor that people look at when they first decide on a domain. Especially if it's a side project / startup and not a bigger project where it doesn't matter if it's 9.99 / year or 500 / year.
    - antsar 8y ago
      Ok, so use ‘whois mydomain.tld’ to check availability, then google “.tld price” or “otherdomain.tld price” to check the cost without identifying your domain.

simlevesque 8y ago

If anyone needs to do the same thing, use this one: https://whois.icann.org https://whois.icann.org

clairity 8y ago
unfortunately icann uses google for captcha.
- lwansbrough 8y ago
  Are you a robot?
  - sigsergv 8y ago
    If you enable anti-fingeprinting option in firefox you basically forced to spend minutes on google captcha training minefield. And sometimes you never pass it, it just refresh tiles indefinitely.

furyg3 8y ago

I also had this experience once a few years ago (2011 or 2012). I found it extremely suspicious and spent a few days running a some experiments. I came up with a list of domains and watched what happened after a GoDaddy search: some (but not all) of my domains were suddenly purchased by a GoDaddy organization. Literally all of the ones that were purchased were available again after a few days (I assume this has to do with the grace period). Since then I don't type any candidate domain into any registrar / online tool unless I'm ready to purchase.

jonhohle 8y ago
This is called domain kiting or "tasting"[0]. The founder of Go Daddy decried the idea a decade ago[1]. Of course this was after running their own kiting operation for some time using ad placement via Google Ad Sense for Domains (no content necessary, just a domain name). I know, because I worked on the app that serviced 20M domains and fed metrics back to the team that decided to buy or release. The project was shuttered after some employee abuse (buying the domains for themselves) and shortly before Bob declared the moral high ground. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting 1 - https://web.archive.org/web/20070707203924/http://www.bobparsons.com/WhyyoucantgetthedomainnameyouwantGoDaddyrescuesRegisterflycustomers.html https://web.archive.org/web/20070707203924/http://www.bobpar...
- DonHopkins 8y ago
  Did Bob Parsons declare the moral high ground while standing on the back of an elephant he murdered? https://gawker.com/5787676/meet-godaddys-ridiculous-elephant-killing-ceo https://gawker.com/5787676/meet-godaddys-ridiculous-elephant...
behringer 8y ago
You should find a registrar that does not engage in this behavior. I use gandi.net. I pay almost twice as much as the cheapest registrars charge but I never have to worry about how they are going to treat me.

Arqu 8y ago

This is a known trick of many registrars, but GoDaddy has to be the leader. Happened to me on two occasions as well. Recently it's supposed to be a bit cracked down on as they have strict quotas on how many domains they can reserve without outright buying. As for my case, it was a couple years ago where they would also host a small site redirecting to the auction. It states that it is owned by some XYZ entity, but if you peel enough layers of the onion scheme you can get to their name. You can read more about the practice and measures here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running

PedroBatista 8y ago

The same thing happened to me some years ago! It was a trendy .com domain that was available, naively I didn't grab it right away, 2 days latter I went to purchase it, it was taken..

dkonofalski 8y ago

I can. I used to work at GoDaddy and they have an "Executive Domain Team" that is basically just a fancy word for a group of people that assist domain kiters. If you search for a domain on GoDaddy's whois, they put a hold on it and publish the list to potential domain "investors" (read: kiters) who then have the option of purchasing it out from under you. These are people that literally invest thousands of dollars to buy up domains on the off chance that they can resell them at a profit. Anytime there's a sunrise period on a new domain TLD, these guys go in and buy all the popular and common names wholesale and they have a dedicated person that works at GoDaddy to help them do this. Anytime you have a question about whether something is a scam or not, just ask yourself where the money is. In this case, it's in GoDaddy making money off of any time a domain name is sold, re-sold, auctioned, or if it changes hands. It's where the majority of their money made comes from, outside of services where people just don't know that better alternatives exist.

Pica_soO 8y ago
Should easily be blasted with denial of service? Proxy- Bot that generates fency sounding company names, and searches for them on go-daddy. Two months of heavy investing into the the eternal resting domains - and the relations should sour. End of (hi)story.
joshuatalb 8y ago
This sounds exactly like what happened to me. I had a few .london domains in one of the early stages of the TLD launch. Sat there for about 60 days, and then all of a sudden - gone. GD support were useless and I lost out on a few quality domain names. Never used them again since. In fact, I don’t even think I got my money back!

gmiller123456 8y ago

This isn't limited to Godaddy. A friend of mine tried to register a domain name on Network Solutions way back when they were still called that. He typed in his credit card number wrong. By the time he got an e-mail stating the transaction failed, someone else had already registered his domain.

galfarragem 8y ago
My impression is that a domain checker works as a password checker: each domain/password inserted gets listed in a database. In case of domains, a simple script is enough to skim them and get the 'gold'. In case of passwords, even if the password was unique, after checking it won't be anymore..
iamnothere 8y ago
I seem to remember a time (probably over a decade ago) where Netsol actually admitted this, tried to defend it, then eventually backed down and said that they would stop doing it. I've always used command-line whois to check for available domains since then, never had one snatched up either.