Domain Magnate

Best deal you’ll find this year! In light of the recent SOPA controversy many registrars are now offering discounts for domain transfers. Ok, to be fair there is no controversy – SOPA is bad, very bad, for the whole Internet, except GoDaddy, who helped write it and are now paying the price as customers are leaving.  SOPA threatens the freedom of the Internet and if passed will allow copyright holders to have sites taken down by a quick order of a judge, without any representation or court.  More bad news is that it’s likely to pass due to wide spread support in the Congress.

There is some good news however. Many registrars are trying to capitalize on the wave of hate towards GoDaddy that this has sprung and provide large discounts for domain transfers:

Name.com $6.65 –  code ‘NODADDY’

NameCheap $6.99 + $0.18 –  code ‘SOPASucks’

DynaDot $6.99 – code ‘TEAMDYNADOT’

Note that these are mostly for .com transfers and expire on Dec 31, so hurry up!

Name.com also have more information on SOPA and their position on it

A new GoDaddy phishing scheme is spreading quickly now, I personally received 4 identical emails from them just an hour ago. Many other domainers reported receiving these, some 5-7 at a time. The email, which appears to come from support@godaddy.com but it points to: http://205.234.236.23/~ytrindic/ It’s a server in Pakistan mzwebhost.com

Domain Registration Confirmation

Dear Customer,

This notification is generated automatically as a service to you.

Because of unusual number of invalid login attempts on you account, we had to believe that, their might be some security problem on you account. So we have decided to put an extra verification process to ensure your identity and your account security.
Please click on sign in to domain servers to continue to the verification process and ensure your account security. It is all about your security. Thank you. and visit the customer service section.

please contact us within 1 days.

If you need to address this matter, or in any way need further assistance or technical support, call us any time at (480) 505-8877 or email us at support@godaddy.com. We appreciate your business!

Sincerely,
GoDaddy.com DomainAlert team

The emails also have the “regular” legal addition which makes them look rather authentic:

*Free hosting, photo album and blog services are ad-supported. Ad-supported Web sites contain
relevant online advertising on a small portion of the site, but DO NOT include obtrusive pop-up ads.
**Not applicable to premium domains, bulk domain purchases, discounted domain products, Sunrise/Landrush domain registrations, .ME domain registrations, discounted memberships or maintenance plans; additional disk space and bandwidth renewals, custom page layouts, custom headers, posters or gift cards. Discount reflected in your shopping cart – cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer or promotion.

Copyright © 2009 GoDaddy.com, Inc.. All rights reserved.

In general these emails look pretty good, much better than the regular scams, where after seeing the “dear sir/madam” you can figure it’s a scam right away. This email even had a smaller frame with a 10% off code and a few real links to GoDaddy.com

Take 10%** off your next order at GoDaddy.com.
Simply enter gdbb366 in your shopping cart or mention the offer code when you call (480) 505-8877.

The question remains however will these guys ever learn to spell and actually write in decent English? However many people don’t read email and just check the title, open it and click the link if it looks authentic.

Last, but not least – be sure to mouse over all links in email before clicking them!

Update: March 5, 2009 – I have just use this codeto renew and bunch of domains and it still works. If .com is what you’re after you don’t need any other godaddy codes!

I was just renewing some domains at godaddy and as usually had to do a little research to find the best coupon codes. People like to post large lists of codes, where most are expired, or simply don’t work and you have to check each of them to see which saves you the most money. Especially now with the recession in full speed domainers try to save every penny on the costly renewals.

So to make it simple, I’ll just list one code I used:

yhkw105a  – dot com  renewals and new registrations at $6.99 (+ $0.20 ICANN fee) – the cheapest price currently available at godaddy.

In related news, Godaddy’s market share in domain registrations is 26.7%, compared to eNom’s 8.3%, Moniker 2.6% and Fabulous only 1.2%. A Godaddy monopoly, when it comes, will definitely not be a good thing for domainers here..

Update: yxl.com was recovered with the help of godaddy

More stolen names might soon pop up for sale, so be warned!

Also a quick reminder: don’t use gmail, or other free email addresses as whois addresses for your domains. They can be hacked!

More details are from a namepros thread:

Some of them are:

yxl.com
zutan.com
filelime.com
relian.com
visitchina.net
visitjapan.net
youlun.com
studentflats.com
studentapartment.com
jiemeng.com
langzi.com
….. read more »

Rick reported this recently on his blog:

It appears GoDaddy.com gives you the option to cancel a transfer, after you have done an account change and the new owner has accepted the domain. How ludicrous is this? I’ve just had it happen a second time. Someone sends you a name, so you send them the money. The next thing they know, they pull it back! All they have to do is go to their account, go to pending account changes, check the box and click cancel. They can do this after it is finished!

Now in both cases it worked out fine because they had pulled it back because of a misunderstanding and quickly did another account change. It still leaves a huge door open for fraud.

I’m sure other registrars would let you pull back a domain as well, after you’ve pushed it.

I suppose it’s been around for a while, but this is the first time I hear about that and this could be a serious problem. Another reason to avoid godaddy and to be extra cautious, especially when dealing with new people.