Image via Complex Original
Go Daddy has played host to millions of web sites for the past 15 years. It's the largest domain registration on the Net. And during its nearly two-decade run, the cheeky web company has constantly found itself mired in controversy. There was the drama that centered around a risque television commercials which featured spokeswomen Jillian Michaels and Danica Patrick. Then there was the uproar caused by GoDaddy's support of the Stop Online Piracy Act. And after last week's massive service outage, the domain name king has once again managed to fall out of the good graces of many. But if you dig deep into Go Daddy's past, you will discover several skeletons in its closet. From massive hack attacks to unprofessional business practices, log into A History of Go Daddy's Biggest Fails.
DNS Attack Affects Millions
Date: Nov. 30, 2005
The web-hosting client was hit with a DNS (denial-of-service) attack, disrupting email service for over 4 million customers. Go Daddy sent notices out to 600,000 of its customers' hosted sites stating there would be a blackout for nearly 65 minutes. Though the shutdown was brief, CEO Bob Parsons said the incident was nearly three times larger than the previous attempts made—a sign of many future outages that have manifested ever since.
FamilyAlbum.com Disaster
Date: Dec. 19, 2006
Go Daddy cancelled the registration for FamilyAlbum.com due to the owner providing an invalid email address for the company. If that wasn't bad enough, Go Daddy then sold the domain to another user under a backorder fee of $18.99 without ever suspending the account. The ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) policy states a registrar can delete a domain for issuing inaccurate information in the whois database. However, the registrant left their correct phone number and postal address, which exposed Go Daddy's half-assed attempt in reaching out to the original owner. Attempting to right its wrong, GD offered to give the name back to its owner if he "indemnified" all legal action against the company.
Suspension of Seclists.org
Date: Jan 24, 2007
After receiving a complaint from MySpace regarding 56,000 user names and passwords behind archived in the mailing lists of Seclists.org, a computer protection site, Go Daddy shut down over 250,000 pages of security information. According to logs sent over to CNET by Seclists.org administrator Gordon Lyon, Go Daddy deactivated the site 52 seconds after leaving him a voicemail, encouraging Lyon to create NoDaddy.com: a consumer activist site where unhappy customers and GoDaddy whistleblowers could share their horror stories. Four years later, the domain giant acquired No Daddy in hopes of silencing the backlash. Too late.
The Elimination of .uk Domains
Date: July 2007
Once again Go Daddy failed to alert customers about the possibility of losing their domain names after the company shifted business plans and dropped its .uk domain support. In addition, the company accumulated a massive number of complaints from registrants about their domains expiring while being promoted as renewed. The country's biggest UK registry, Nominet, informed an angry user by the name of Lord Matt that Go Daddy was never one of its members, mentioning the site was “effectively reselling via a third party with whom they have stopped doing business.” It was said that thousands of users lost their domains.
RateMyCop.com Shutdown
Date: Feb. 28, 2008 - March 11, 2008
The police-watching site that lets users comment on their interactions with law enforcement officials was temporarily taken offline for engaging in “suspicious activity.” At least that's what Go Daddy told founder Gino Sesto when he called the company. But when speaking with a supervisor, the script was flipped, stating RateMyCop.com had surpassed GD's 3TB bandwidth limit. Sesto's response: "How can it be overloaded when it only had 80,00 page views today, and 400,000 yesterday?" Bagged!
.me Domain Name Screw Up
Date: July 17, 2008
In early 2008, Go Daddy won the rights to distribute .me extensions, which were heavily billed as the next big thing in domain registration. That same morning the service went live and became available for a $20 yearly rate. All hell broke loose as users complained about receiving confirmation and credit card charges for their domains, followed by cancellation notices. Things couldn't get worse, right? It did. Those who purchased specific .me domains found themselves sharing the same registration with other buyers, creating mass confusion and ownership quarrels with everyone involved.
2010 Malware Attacks
Date: 2010
A series of virus attacks led to an undetermined number of Go Daddy-hosted sites being infected with malicious code. Chief Executive of FireHost, Chris Drake, declared hackers embedded code into the site's Web application (possibly through blog comments). Online protection experts Sucuri Security claimed the attacks redirected users to malware sites running hazardous Javascript code that automatically downloaded fake antivirus onto their computer. Go Daddy had the gall to blame domain owners for running obsolete software, then took the high road and admitted that there were huge internal problems. It also went on to say that less than half of its 4.3 million hosted sites had been affected. Uhhh, was that suppose to be good news?
Banned Super Bowl XLIV "Lola" Commercial
Date: Feb. 7, 2010
Watch the commercial: Click here
Go Daddy's no stranger to having its Super Bowl commercials banned from syndication, but one ad in particular ruffled a few feathers with CBS executives and the gay community without ever being aired. Spokesperson Danica Patrick profiles a former football player named Lola, who looks to design lingerie and open a site on the domain service, all while showboating what many would interpret as feminine flamboyance. Yes, it was as bad as it sounds.
CEO Kills Elephant On Camera
Date: March 31, 2011
Watch the video: Click here
Go Daddy CEO, Bob Parsons, has shared his hunting expeditions with the world on numerous occasions, but his latest adventure to Zimbabwe was considered by many to be inhumane. A camera crew followed the GoDaddy capo, along with a group of fellow hunters, as he shot down an elephant and brought it back to villagers, who stripped the large mammal of its meat. The incident became a PR nightmare as PETA had a field day calling for a boycott of GoDaddy and closing its account with the domain host. Parsons, in a statement, said he was only looking to feed Zimbabweans: "Many die each year from starvation and one of the problems they have is the elephants…that trash many of their fields destroying the crops.”
Pledges Support Of SOPA
Date: Dec. 21, 2011
When GoDaddy announced its support for the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, all hell broke loose. Once the news broke, Go Daddy experienced a tremendous spike in domain transfers, resulting in the company losing an est. 28,000 domains on Christmas Day. Domain registration site Namecheap claimed it received 32,000+ transfers on December 29 as well. Many speculate Go Daddy lost anywhere between 40,000 to 100,000 accounts thus far. Adding to the embarrassment, CNET reported that its been delaying customer transfers and having representatives call owners begging them not to move. Following the boycott spearheaded by social news site Reddit, Go Daddy took the hypocritical route and deaded all SOPA support in hopes of restoring its public image. There may be no coming back from this one.
Suffers Massive Service Outage
Date: Sept. 10, 2012
Last Monday, GoDaddy experienced its largest service outage yet. As the world's largest domain registrar, tens of thousands of websites were affected. After GoDaddy announced the outage, a member of the hacker collective Anonymous took to Twitter and claimed that the site was taken down by a DNS attack carried out by his group. The reason? Because GoDaddy supported the Stop Online Piracy Act. A day later, GoDaddy CEO, Scott Wagner, said that the company wasn't hacked and that the outage was the result of a "series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables.”
