Hey ya'll. This is (really) Chris Coyier. I had css-tricks.com registered on GoDaddy. It recently came to my attention that the ownership of this domain has been transferred away from my ownership to PlanetDomain. For now, thankfully the nameservers still point to MediaTemple, so the site is still up. That could change at any time.
I'm going to keep track of all this.
Timeline of Events
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Hacker gains access to my GoDaddy account and GMail account. He initiates the domain transfer away from GoDaddy: unlocking domain, changing registration information, putting in request from PlanetDomain. Emails are likely generated from all this activity but I saw none of them. Presumably the hacker deleted them from my GMail account.
Strange: My GoDaddy account password was never changed, nor does that password exist in my GMail account. How did he get in?
Monday, November 14, 2011
I wake up and can't log into GMail. I reset the password through cell phone verification (I still have this text message and a screenshot of it). I honestly didn't think much of it at the time. I thought of a few reasonable explanations for it and went on with my day.
Question: Was the hacker able to gain access to my GMail account by resetting the password, or did he gain access some other way and then reset the password to attempt to lock me out.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
In the evening of this day the domain transfer was completed away from GoDaddy and to PlanetDomain. Again the hacker was able to access my GMail, gaining access to the needed emails and getting the transfer verification codes, and then delete them so I never saw them. He changed the password to the GMail account again.
This same evening, I had a minor site hack. VaultPress caught it. In my index.php file in the root (effects the entirety of WordPress) a link was added to 8oc.com. Later I found this same exact thing happened to Kirupa Chinnathambi of kirupa.com.
Uh oh: does this mean the hacker has access to my MediaTemple hosting too? FTP access? Account Center access? None of these passwords were changed.
Monday, November 21, 2011
I wake up to be locked out of my GMail account again. Again reset the password through cell phone verification code. Again, stupidly, didn't think much of it. (Thought something like my 1Password got out of sync).
Uh oh: does this mean the hacker can reset my GMail password at will? I have two-step authentication turned on now, hopefully that will prevent this in the future. My passwords for GMail have always been totally unique and complex.
Friday, December 2, 2011
The day I found out about all this.
7:30am - I found out about all this from emails from David Appleyard. I immediately thought of David Walsh who this is also happening to. It's also happening to instantshift.com and sohtanka.com. None of us share a GoDaddy hosting account. These are all separate instances. Important to note: I received no email or phone call verifying the transferring of this domain. The email address in my GoDaddy account was unchanged.
7:45am - Called GoDaddy support at (480) 505-8877. Was not helpful. Was told just to email domaindisputes@godaddy.com (which I did immediately).
8:06am - I tweeted about the problem. GoDaddy sent me a DM saying to fill out a form, but the form was a 404 page.
Friday 8:30am - I got the correct link to the domain disptute form and filled it out. This included a scan of my driver's license. The website says it will be 3 days for an initial response. I hope it's sooner than that.
9:00am - I went to my banjo lesson because at least nobody can take that away from me.
10:10am - Trying to contact PlanetDomain (just assuming this is them). They don't seem to have an active Twitter account. Just sending an email through the contact form for now.
10:15am - Got generic email back from GoDaddy:
If they are unwilling to transfer the domain name back you will need to contact the current registrar or registrant for further assistance.
11:50 - Just got off the phone with GoDaddy (Tony in domain disputes and Alon in customer service, I think). The current status is that they have already sent a request to PlanetDomain, and the next step is to wait for them to do the due diligence and get back to GoDaddy with an answer on whether or not they will return the domain. This be a matter of days, or a week (sine it's Friday, very likely won't be until early next week). Other facts about GoDaddy:
- So far they have found this has happened to around 12 accounts, all within the "Web Design" genre (so most likely a targeted attack).
- There is no accessible log from with your GoDaddy account to see what/when things happened.
- They do have access logs, but they can't share that information with me.
- The domain was transferred away from GoDaddy the evening of Nov 20th
- They have, but cannot provide me with, the email address used to transfer the domain away.
- GoDaddy confirmed my global account email has never been changed, but it WAS changed for the domain css-tricks.com prior to the move.
- The request to unlock the domain happened on Nov. 14th at 4:30pm Mountain Time. Normally there is a 5-7 day waiting period, but GoDaddy offers instant transfer and they remarked that it was unusual that the hacker chose not to do that.
- They confirmed no other domains have left my account.
Friday 12:15pm - I asked VaultPress if they could tell me the IP address of the person who changed the index.php file, but they don't have that information. It might be in my server logs if I have them from that long ago.
1:05pm - Former employee of PlanetDomain tells me that it looks as if the hacker attempted to remove the nameservers, but the PlanetDomain system for that failed. (This line in the WHOIS: "No name servers present.") The hacker would have to call PlanetDomain to "fix" this, which they have not (thank god).
5:25pm - About the end of the work day here and heading in to the weekend, so it's unlikely anything will happen until early next week. I'd love to get at least an acknowledgment from PlanetDomain / NetRegistry that they've gotten the domain dispute from GoDaddy. But no such luck.
7:10pm - Send off an email to MediaTemple letting them know the issue. They aren't really involved, but if they can find for me the IP address that changed that file on the server on Nov 21st, that might be helpful.
Saturday December 3, 2011
6:05am - Heard back from MediaTemple. The server logs don't go back that far, so no dice on getting IP address from that.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
3:50pm - First contact from PlanetDomain - Christine Dela Fuente of the Customer Support Team:
Thank you for your email.
We are currently in communication with GoDaddy regarding this. We will
advise you via email of the decision.
I'm hoping the drastic time zone different between Australia and the U.S. doesn't inhibit communication between PlanetDomain and GoDaddy.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Sometime during the night the status of the domain (viewable from the WHOIS information) changed to "LOCKED". I think it was "ACTIVE" before. Also, the nameservers are now listed correctly (NS1.MEDIATEMPLE.NET, NS2.MEDIATEMPLE.NET) instead of "No name servers present." as it said before. I don't know the implications of this.
Thankfully, my nameservers have not yet changed. instantshift.com and sohtanaka.com have not been so lucky, their sites are now offline. My heart goes out to them, so awful.
The same happened to designshack.net, but David Appleyard was able to speak directly with PlanetDomain and PlanetDomain agreed to change his nameservers back to his, so his site is back online. That is a great first step of cooperation from PlanetDomain, yay!
9:40am - David Appleyard talked to GoDaddy this morning. They said: "I just talked to [PlanetDomain] about it this morning. It was the first thing on their plate."
1:10pm - David Appleyard spoke with PlanetDomain directly again. They said that the criminal's account has been suspended, so they no longer have access to make changes. I don't know for sure if css-tricks.com was in the same account as David's, but I hope it is.
5:00pm - Email from Christine Dela Fuente at PlanetDomain:
We will update you via email as soon as we hear from them.
EFF YES. Can't wait to see the domain back in it's original home.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
10:00am From GoDaddy via Twitter:
3:00pm From GoDaddy via Twitter:
9:00pm Email from PlanetDomain:
Please be advised the domain css-tricks.com has been transferred back successfully to GoDaddy.
WHOIS data is back. Good stuff! Still waiting to see the domain back in my GoDaddy account.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
7:45am - Domain is back in my GoDaddy account.
Other Information
- This happened to David Airey as well. He attributes a Gmail Security Flaw (this particular flaw has been fixed) as to why he was never notified of the domain transfer.
- David Walsh received two emails on November 28th from moya.server@gmail.com. One said: "trust me godady can't help you," the other: "pay 2k to get ur domain back .."
- This is not isolated to GoDaddy. Original registrants varied, see below.
- A former employee of PlanetDomain tells me that PlanetDomain is owned and operated by a Sydney company called NetRegistry(NR). He also tells me the domain is in "active" status which is good news for the possibility of moving it back.
- Official rules on Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution.
- Hackers News conversation (was on homepage entire day Friday)
- Slashdot conversation
Sites with Same Problem
davidairey.com - Resolved
abduzeedo.com - Prevented - Was able to stop domain transfer before it happened, but all signs indicate the same hacker tried to steal it (forserver@yahoo.com) - Originally on DreamHost
css-tricks.com - Resolved Originally at GoDaddy, Bad Guy moved to PlanetDomain - Domain is back at GoDaddy.
davidwalsh.name - Resolved Originally at GoDaddy, Bad Guy moved to Name.com then to 1and1 (highly unusual and isn't supposed to be possible) - Name.com is was able to get it back from 1and1, although I don't think it was through cooperation on 1and1's part.
scriptandstyle.com - Resolved Originally at GoDaddy, Bad Guy moved to PlanetDomain - David Walsh is the owner of this domain. Transferred back to GoDaddy on December 6th.
sohtanaka.com - Unresolved Originally at 1and1, Bad Guy moved to PlanetDomain - Soh Tanaka's site is offline (nameservers were removed). PlanetDomain is ready to give the domain back to 1and1, but 1and1 isn't responsive.
designshack.net - Resolved Originally at GoDaddy, Bad Guy moved to PlanetDomain - David Appleyard is the owner of this domain. Transferred back to GoDaddy.
instantshift.com - Resolved Originally at GoDaddy, Bad Guy moved to PlanetDomain - Daniel Adams has domain back in GoDaddy account.
kirupa.com - Resolved Originally on NetworkSolutions, Bad Guy moved to PlanetDomain - Kirupa Chinnathambi has domain back.
shiachat.com - Resolved Originally on 1and1, Bad Guy moved to PlanetDomain. Stolen on October 8, went down on November 24. Ali A. is now has domain back (actually kept it on PlanetDomain instead of moving back to 1and1 because they are so awful).
So godaddy is no longer secure – I’d be interested in finding other domain providers that are.
name .com is awesome!!!! i have all my domains with them
Using Name.com as well. Never a fan of GoDaddy.
I’ll third name.com. I’ve been quite happy with them since jumping ship from godaddy.
I have a bunch of domains in Godaddy. I should think about transferring them to another…
GoDaddy has *always* been a terrible option. A few years ago there were tons of horror stories of their bad service, many of which were chronicled on a site called “NoDaddy.com,” which no longer exists. There were even cases of GoDaddy mysteriously failing to renew a domain set to auto-renew, with the name being quickly put up for auction by GoDaddy.
No, it is secure. Someone either guessed the password, sent a password reset or got in some other way but they got the domain legitimately through a transfer. You can see the new registrar information from the whois information.
It does not appear at this time that GoDaddy is at fault here. Many other domains are affected similarly which started with different registrars.
I’m with Namecheap.com currently. Absolutely no problems so far, and very nice. Typically a promotion running every month.
Registrars need to protect their clients by providing methods which force secure passwords, etc. GoDaddy, and other registrars in this mess, need to wake up or lose more and more clients.
LOL are you kidding?! GoDaddy has never been secure! lol, there’s so many horror stories from people using GoDaddy, just Google it…
godaddy has always be a terrible choice.
A good alternative to be sure to own your domain name is gandi.net
Also on Name.com
I recently redirected my domain to my tumblr, and it was so quick (tumblr suggested 72 hours: it only took 20 mins) and easy that my opinion of an already good service has improved.
I’d never use GoDaddy unless I had too… Always found their site confusing and unhelpful.
And their CEO shoots elephants :-p
I was GD for a long time, then became sick of their advertising and service, since then I’ve moved all my domains over to namecheap and I’ve been really happy there.
How come?
I hope you are fine!
Was your domain unlocked?
In my case, the thief unlocked it himself.
It must have been, but I didn’t not receive any notification of this happening.
That’s some scary shit.
I hope everything gets resolved soon, Chris!
I really hope we will not lose this great website, nor you lose this really expensive domain.
Hope this gets resolved soon and that you have some legal recourse in this situation. I personally am hosted with 1&1 and I haven’t had these issues. (maybe I should say “yet?”)
I have run into similar problems with a client that was hosted on 1&1. Due to a configuration error we were unable to renew, they charged us for falling into their hold period while we waited for support. About three months after it was resolved I got an email from a guy wondering why our domain was listed in his account.
It seemed like someone had simply changed the account number on our domain. Fortunately for us the guy never wanted our domain. 1&1 told us to work out a deal with the guy… for what? None of us had initiated the transfer.
I complained to ICANN and they responded saying that they would not do anything on the *very same day* we got access back from 1&1. What a terrible nerve wracking experience it was.
Wow thanks for sharing. I didn’t know this was so prevalent.
Sorry to hear about this, Chris. I’m shocked, but not surprised to hear yet another jaw-dropping bungle by GoDaddy. I’ll be keeping a close eye here (for now) and on your Twitter stream to see how it all unfolds. Good luck!
Scary stuff!
I hope you get it all sorted, Chris!
NNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I can’t even imagine what it’s like to have this happen. I’ve been following David Walsh’s experiences over the past several days (can’t believe it’s still ongoing) and it frustrates me to see the sites of people such as David and yourself going through this.
I really hope that this gets sorted out quickly for you.
I’ve always heard bad things about GoDaddy, never anything good. I’ve always stayed clear of them simply because I think their website is hard to navigate, and kind of ugly. Hover.com has been good to me, and their site is pretty. :)
The site is like that for a reason. To generate calls into their support line.
@josh: agreed Hover has a prettier site, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better. When I had the temerity to complain about their site to Hover’s GM, he threatened to delete my domains. It’s all documented at http://www.notoriouswebmaster.com/2011/03/25/hover-hubris/.
As I note in the post, however, Hover does have much to commend it, including the very knowledgeable support team.
This is exactly why I do not use GoDaddy!
Isn’t the first time I’ve heard of it happening and am also a victim myself. It happened to me about two years ago. It took over 6 months to resolve and a variety of “confirming” steps to verify who I was. Overall the experience was not very pleasurable and it caused me to never use their services again!
I hope its a learning experience for everyone out there. A shame it has to be learned through such means as this but people who limit their trust in the services provided by GoDaddy, its just not worth the chances!
Chris, I wish you and those mentioned all the best in resolving it!
You’re incorrect in believing it’s isolated to Godaddy. If someone gets your password for any site that is endgame.
Mark, you’re wrong, it’s isolated to GoDaddy… You sound like you work for GoDaddy… i’d advise people to not listen to you.
Nick, I think what Mark is referring to is that this can happen with ANY registrar you use. I realize it’s easier for people to believe Go Daddy is “insecure” because of this, but they might needlessly frustrate themselves if ever they find their domain name hijacked with (registrar).
Do a Google search for (registrar) hijacking, and you’ll invariably find it’s happened with everyone else. The important thing, though, is that registrar takes prompt and serious action once they’re notified of such.
Unfortunately registrars also get cases of alleged hijacking where it’s not necessarily so, few of which I handled in my ex-registrar life.
Good luck sorting this out, Chris. We’re on the case for the same situation with Design Shack as well. Here’s hoping that GoDaddy get everything reversed as soon as possible.
This is atrocious. I’ve got lots of domains registered with them and am now scared. Keep logging your experience wherever you can. If this is how they’re going to treat customers people ought to know.
@trentwalton
I Just moved all my domains off godaddy yesturday. (45 domains) The reasons I left:
- Sick of the constant upselling (6 screens to buy or renew 1 domain)
- I personally don’t agree with the CEOs hobbies (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXVH4OsfapI)
- The user interface is slow and confusing (and ugly). I want to encourage and reward good UX from web companies.
I went with namecheap.com after reading a heap of users experiences, and trying the control panel.
I used the code SWITCH2NC to get $1 off the transfer. They also take the existing expiry date and add one year, so some of the the domains I switched now expire in 12+8 months.
contact me @lukeholder with my transfer experience. Hopefully this was helpful trent, and didn’t sound too much like an ad :)
If you’re scared about having your account hacked then get a password that has eight capitals, seven lower cases, nine special characters and 11 numbers. Then change all of your validation methods for godaddy’s side. change your username and get domain protection on all your domains so that you have to submit your photo identification before you transfer, cancel or expire. This makes you safe on any site not just Godaddy.
That’s good password advice, but no password will keep you safe if someone can reset it at will.
I am using Dotster, and they have the ability to lock transfers. They also email you about EVERYTHING you do to your account, which is normally annoying, but in a case like this would be very handy!
I think the whole point of breaking in to your account is that they have the ability to change your email and so the verification email would be routed to the thieves anyway.
If I had your password I could go in, turn off notifications, change the email in the whois information and unlock for transfers. No matter what company you are at you are vulnerable if they have account access. I can’t believe this is such a hard concept for 70% of the people here.
Outrageous!
Hope this will be resolved soon.
I really dislike GoDaddy… I’ve used them once… and only once. I still have them for my one domain but have never been happy with their service… truthfully, the only reason I don’t switch is because I’m not sure how and am too scared of losing the domain…
If you use your one domain for anything serious, I’d recommend switching sooner rather than later. “Better late than never” doesn’t apply here ;)
A couple of resources:
GoDaddy – Transferring Domain Names to Another Registrar
http://help.godaddy.com/article/3560
Name.com Blog – How to Transfer your Domains from GoDaddy to Name.com (video)
http://blog.name.com/2011/11/how-to-transfer-your-domains-from-godaddy-to-name-com/
You’re unhappy with their 24/7 service and all you have is one domain name with them? Sorry, I have to call shenanigans on this.
TO anyone reading Marks comments here, he works for GoDaddy. Read all of his comments, he’s hard core defending GoDaddy, don’t trust what he has to say. Mark, your distasteful.
Sorry, Nick, but do you have irrefutable proof “mark” indeed works for Go Daddy, just because you find his comments disagreeable? I’m not with Go Daddy either if ever you get that impression, and it’s understandable if one finds that hard to believe.
I also realize some people might not like to “hear” what mark said, but I actually agree with him based on my ex-registrar work. One can only do so much to keep their possessions safe, especially if they don’t control everything and anything that can make that happen.
That sucks, especially since GoDaddy is being unhelpful. :/ Can you see what the domain is now registered under?
I looked up the WHOIS and it’s registered somewhere in Austria:
Bakulina 12,
Kharkiv, gras 61166
Austria
Phone: +61.4354353455
Record last updated on: 21 Nov 2011 16:20:33 EST
Good luck!
That’s a bogus address. Kharkiv is in Ukraine, and Bakulina is a street in that city. I’m not sure why they’ve put Graz, Austria in the address too! Also, the phone number is +61 for Australia. I guess the whole WHOIS entry is duff.
These european hackers are getting absurd.
An Australian hacker?
I was made aware of these guys via Lifehacker.com:
http://www.namecheap.com/
They apparently have a stellar reputation. I’m planning on transferring all of my stuff over there ASAP, especially after hearing about this. Best of luck to you.
And then, if your account gets hacked, they’ll do the exact same thing and you’ve just wasted your money transferring to a different registrar.
NameCheap has worked well for me too. I’ve been a customer of theirs for several years.
Sorry to hear about your issue using GoDaddy. Talk about piss-poor customer service!
I wish there was something we all could do to help (other than spread the word about it). CSS-Tricks is an awesome resource.
- jeff
Piss poor? The guy hacked into his account and transferred the domain through legitimate methods to a completely different registrar which they have no control over. Honestly the fastest method would be to sue the hacker using the whois information as a base. How is there any way to defend against this when more than 50% of domains are registered through their site? That’s more than half of all domain names and you want them to… what? Monitor each account for a hacker who legitimately transferred a domain (which is 100% automated)?
Mark, buddy, we can see you work for GoDaddy. Maybe you should get back to work and actually do something about this problem, instead of coming here and whining about everyone who’s experienced GoDaddy’s piss poor performance and customer service. Nobody’s going to buy anything your selling here, I think people see past it… Go and make your website(GoDaddy.com) better, improve your security and customer service. Be the bigger man and make your business better, don’t sit there and complain that everyone hates you because you suck, do something about it and show people that GoDaddy actually could possibly maybe provide somewhat maybe good customer service someday, maybe… Time to put your pants on. Have a good day.
I had a problem like this with a client last year. It wasn’t a GoDaddy account but like with you the email account was unchanged.
Long story short: we found out that the hacker (it was a hacker) had gotten into the control panel, changed the email address. changed everything else, including ownership, and then changed the mail address back again. The problem was that changing the email did not send a confirmation to the old address.
I found out later that that hosting company had a lot of security problems like hacked websites, ftp-accounts, etc.
I am not saying this is a similar problem, but it sure sounds similar.
It reminds us to keep a close eye on our own site domains and providers.
Besides I think it is a shame it’s happening with you Chris, I’m sure you’re gonna resolve this problem very soon.
Keep us up to date. :)
Bottom line of this blog post: Under all circumstances, avoid doing any business with GoDaddy.
Their customer support is awful. Last time I called in, they said I needed to renew something in order for them to fix a problem with database import/export.
They sent me to to wiki pages on how to do what I needed to do, which did not work.
LDB: Lie, Deny, Blame – is their motto.
Funny thing is they tried to pitch me on managed hosting. Yeah right!
They are liars, cheap-skates, and they will do anything to get you off of the phone.
If you want to do business with them, use a headset or speaker phone, and do not get off the phone with them until your issue is resolved (even if it takes hours.)
That’s the only way to get business done with GoDaddy.
LOL. Learned a new acronym today.
You know what the funniest part about your post is? Each telephone representative is held personally accountable for the success of your problem. If you call back in they are penalized for that occurrence so it’s in their best interest to keep you on the phone and help you with the problem. The only way they would want to get you off the phone is if they can no longer support your issue, ie. coding/database management/programming language issues (php4 to php5 issues for example) or if you are straight up too ignorant to google your issue and find out how to fix it yourself.
I hope this will be resolved with success…
You are a great man, with a gold info on this site…
What a pain. So sorry to hear about your issues at GoDaddy. I’ve always recommended GoDaddy to clients for domain name registration.
Wish there was a GoDaddy “Frank Eliason” on Twitter who could take on the issue and resolve it quickly for you.
A similar thing happened to graphic design blogger David Airey. He got his domain back with the help from someone who is friendly with the CEO of GoDaddy. This hugely improved GoDaddy’s helpfulness. Maybe you can contact /david Airey to see if he can put you in touch with the same person.
Here is a blog post describing the recovery.
Ugh. I’m keeping an eye on this. We use GoDaddy at work and may have to switch registrars.
Find one which emails you on any change including email addresses and lock the domain. So if your email address is changed you can reset it and verify the lock is still in place.
Personally I think GoDaddy shares some negligence here for not sending such change notices.
Hi Chris,
I’m the guy who initially reported this to you and David as my domain was the first to be hijacked followed by all yours straight to the same package on Planetdomain. Luckily, I convinced Planetdomain to put a lock on my domain and remove the dns and remove it from the package under the hacker’s control.. I suggest we work together to do the same for your domains if you don’t want them to be transfered out. Keep in mind, there is a 60day lock on domains after they’re transfered.. After the 60 days he can transfer it out from planetdomains and then you’re really screwed.
I need you guys to reply-all to the emails I sent you so that we can work as a group seeing that I’ve raised a heavy case with planetdomain and 1and1 (my original registrar) and we seem to be making good progress and they’re willing to work with me.
What an unscrupulous action! I have all my domains registered with Godaddy but have become increasing dissatisfied with their service and charges. I do like the ease of administering DNS but if anyone has a better, smaller and secure suggestion, please suggest!
Chris, your articles, tutorials and general notes on all things CSS and beyond are priceless. I hope your issue is resolves soon. Maybe a boycott of Godaddy.com is in order!
Occupy godaddy! Let’s all stop giving giving our money$ to godaddy and boycott them!
lol, if they have your credit card info, GoDaddy wont let you leave, they’ll keep charging you even if they don’t provide you any service.
Jeez Louis! Our Support to you Chris… Hope you get this solved… And hopefully they wont hold your domain for ransom… Did you not know if or when your domain registration expired or something? or where you not notified? =(
Not sure whether it will be of much use, but have you done a “whois” on your domain? Looks like it’s a chap in Austria…
Reverse Whois: “oca” owns about24 other domains Email Search: is associated with about 3 domains
Registrar History: 2 registrars NS History: 1 change on 2 unique name servers over 4 years. IP History: 7 changes on 5 unique IP addresses over 4 years. Whois History: 317 records have been archived since 2007-10-27 . Reverse IP: 3 other sites hosted on this server. Log In or Create a FREE account to start monitoring this domain name
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Domain Name: CSS-TRICKS.COM
Reseller…………..: PlanetDomain Ltd Pty
Created on…………: 4 Jul 2007 16:26:57 EST
Expires on…………: 4 Jul 2019 16:26:57 EST
Record last updated on: 21 Nov 2011 16:20:33 EST
Status…………….: ACTIVE
Owner:
oca
(465144)
Bakulina 12,
Kharkiv, gras 61166
Austria
Phone: +61.4354353455
Email:
Administrative Contact, Billing Contact:
oca
(465143)
Bakulina 12,
Kharkiv, gras 61166
Austria
Phone: +61.4354353455
Email:
Technical Contact:
oca
(465145)
Bakulina 12,
Kharkiv, gras 61166
Austria
Phone: +61.4354353455
Email:
Domain servers in listed order:
No name servers present.
Like one siad before: Kharkiv is somewhere in Ukraine, not Austria. And the phone area code is from Australia.
This means, that this domain info was faked too.
Good research includes also cultural aspects and knowledge.
I’d say use bluehost or fatcow (which I’ve been using for about a year now). The only reason goDaddy gets so much traffic and customers in Danika Patrick. (It’s a scam. They’re trying to sell her, not good service and domain names.)
I wish you the best of luck with this Chris. Thanks for keeping us updated too. I’ll be watching this thread like a hawk (since I too use GoDaddy). I’d also be interested in GoDaddy alternatives if you find some.
Again, good luck man!
They’ve already screwed-up some pages. check this link to your nth-child tester
http://css-tricks.com/examples/nth-of-type-tester/
Yet one more reason to transfer all my stuff out as soon as agreements are up.
Hope everything turns out ok!
I use ICDsoft, and have always been happy with their service. It’s not a big hosting company, but their features and setting options are great and their support has been fantastic. They only offer support by email, but I don’t think I’ve ever waited more than an hour to receive support on any issue by email. Once while I was in college, they even helped me with my PHP homework! (seriously, I was amazed) They’re have a lot of integrity as a hosting company; they offer you everything they should without making it seem like you should be paying extra, warn you when they’re going to change something big months in advance, and have amazing up time. I can’t recommend them enough.
If you can afford it, I’d go with Media Temple. It costs about three times as much as ICDsoft, but gives you a ton of extra features, fantastic 24 hour phone support, the best control panel I’ve ever seen, possibly better up-times than ICDsoft (which is hard to do), and great server stability/speed.
As a professional web developer who has worked with agencies/freelanced, I’ve used a lot of control panels and rangled with a lot of hosting companies. GoDaddy is by far one of my least favorite hosting companies; they’re dishonest, scammy, have horrible advertising, and their site seems like it’s intentionally unusable. The two companies I mentioned above are the best I’ve ever gotten the chance to use. I try to put every client seeking hosting on one of those two services; if they can afford Media Temple (20$/month minimum), I put them on that without hesitation, if they can’t, I put them on ICDsoft (about $6/month for everything most people probably need). Both services have great integrity and are really dedicated to providing great service. I’d say once you can, get off of godaddy as fast as possible; I hate that service for a reason.
I hope you can get this resolved! I’m sorry it’s happening to you. There are some really horrible people out there in the world.
GoDaddy focuses on only finding sexy girls and brand them as GoDaddy girls. Other than that security and customer care utterly poor. Like other guys, I’m also scared as I have lot’s of domain with them. :(
For what it’s worth, I use http://softsyshosting.com/. They are awesome and I have never had a problem. Their support is incredible as well. They usually reply to any of you questions within minutes. I used godaddy once and I will never use them again. Navigation is clunky and hard to use and their customer support is down right terrible as you are finding out the hard way. I’d consider a switch.
I’ve been transferring my domains away from Godaddy over the last few months, they are just full of gimmicks and a really hard to use admin panel
I have been in process of transferring to namecheap.com and I think I’ll expedite this process now. Good luck!
I hope this issue gets resolved soon.
I use register.com which has great customer service.
Hope you get it all sorted Chris. This site is pure gold.
If GoDaddy has half a brain they’ll sort this stuff out immediately for you, not in 3 days.
It amazes me that scammers are able to get their way with GoDaddy, but website owners often have to struggle for weeks to resolve the issues that are created, even when they are clearly the owners and there is no documented proof that they authorized a transfer.
This is not an isolated incident, or even an uncommon one – this sort of thing happens all of the time, and has been for years. Obviously, GoDaddy doesn’t care, even when it is fairly high profile websites that are being affected. The only appropriate solution is to take your business elsewhere.
GoDaddy is an awful company with some of the worst customer service I’ve ever had the horror of dealing with, and there are plenty of competitive alternatives.
Best of luck in getting this resolved, Chris. Hope it happens sooner rather than later!
Godaddy is awful – especially in terms of support. Its 30-45 minutes to talk to a human and then when you get a person, they aren’t knowledgable enough to actually assist.
I wish you the best in getting this garbage straightened out.
It’s the human nature to generalize from just one situation. For me, it gets 10 sec to talk with someone, a true specialist. And i’m a network engineer and my problems where really hard to solve.
What you don’t realize is that this is the fault of the recruiters and management team. You are “required” little to no experience to get a level 1 support job @ GoDaddy. In addition, all of the level 1 support “techs” have a sales quota. The ones that are actually good at Sales, keep their jobs and end up moving to other departments. The ones that are actually decent at the technical aspects, generally aren’t that good at sales and end up losing their jobs.
I use InnocentHost – really secure and affordable but the customer service is brilliant – can’t fault them.
I get my clients to use them as well for domains and hosting – that was all is in one place.
I hope you get everything sorted though – I had one of my domains from Holdfire.net hijacked once, they got it back but weren’t much help about the whole situation.
You probably did not unlocked your domain. I think it’s a mistake from your part. No one needs to think that GoDaddy is not safe.
Spoken like a true Go Daddy employee! With grammar and spelling to match.
I can’t imagine how frustrating that might be. I use Gator Host mostly for hosting, but I’m thinking of transferring my domains registration there also. They seem very reliable. Good luck. I hope it all ends well.
All the best Chris. I used GoDaddy once, never again. Hope it gets sorted soon.
I hope it works out. I use godaddy as well… I’ll probably switch too.
I’ve moved all over my clients/personal domains to namecheap from godaddy over the course of this year. Their customer service is just terrible.
I don’t think that this has anything to do with GoDaddy. If you look at the other sites listed, several different registrars were used. This guy actually targeted sites that got lots of traffic, and he took them. It is as simple as that.
You will get it back, but it is going to take time.
Time to switch to NameCheap!
Alex, how long have you been employed by GoDaddy?
I could see this maybe happening to cccp-tricks.com ;p.
Best wishes for getting it sorted out!
Best of luck : ( we stopped using go daddy a long time ago.
Good luck Chris, let us know if we can do anything to help! I work at Name.com, we’ve been helping David Walsh troubleshoot his issues – we’ve seen it all but are never ceased to be amazed…
Not trying to give you guys a hard sell but do want to let you know that Name.com is an awesome SECURE registrar out of Denver, Colorado. We’re your small local alternative that will give you customized support while maintaining competitive pricing – and we’re just way cooler than the competition :) Feel free to hit us up on Twitter, @namedotcom or facebook.com/namedotcom or check us out at blog.name.com.
Through the end of December we’re running a $7.39 COM/NET transfer special – no hidden fees, price includes ICANN fee. We’d love to help you guys keep your domains safe should you want to give us a try :)
Anyone who recommends a company they have been with “for a few months” should not be posting. Domains are renewed, at a minimum, YEARLY. If you don’t have a few years of experience with a registrar I don’t consider that a useful recommendation.
I use domainsatcost.ca, they are the largest registrar in Canada and have been stable and reliable over the years. Not to mention cheap.
I have been using easydns.com for over 10 years, and LOVE THEM TO PIECES! I will gladly pay $25/year per domain for the piece of mind of an awesome, professional service!
Godaddy are absolutely awful to use. Please give our service a look. At the very least, give anyone but them a chance. The domain industry is a commodity one but people are starting to realise they don’t have to be mistreated to get a domain. It’s like watching the entire web recover from an abusive relationship.
Sorry,I thought it would show the website URL. Http://nametoolkit.com
Hi,
Check out this story. I read about this about an year back.
Excerpt from this http://timonweb.com/domain-theft-story
Remember, you have only 15 days to undo domain transfer if you’re on GoDaddy (really dunno, maybe this is Icann’s rule and is applied to all registars). So contact undo@godaddy.com immediatelly!
That is precisely what to do for this situation. Hopefully the OP did that.