DirectI suspects 175,000 domains [blog.directi.com].
From the DirectI corporate blog:
. . Directi <has recently taken action> to track down and stop abusive domain names and registrants from abusing Directi’s services.
- Over 50,000 domain names have been suspended that were either involved in abusive activity or registered by customers/registrants exhibiting persistent patterns of abuse.
- These domain names (and/or their registrants) were involved in various types of abuse, such as spamming, phishing/spoofing, malware perpetration, suspected pedo#*$!ography, financial frauds and falsified ‘Whois’ information.
- All other services utilized by any of these domain names have also been revoked.
- Over the past three months, certain resellers have been identified who have been the destination of choice for bad actors;
I wonder if DirectI was specifically targeted by bad actors or if DirectI is just the first registrar to perform serious housecleaning?
Hat tip to Directi or run for the exits?
More to come from other registrars?
Anyone unjustly burned without appeal?
[edited by: Webwork at 6:02 pm (utc) on Oct. 24, 2008]
Cute.
It's like punishing gun sellers for a gun murder.
Sounds more like shady practices by a two bit domain registrar.
Sounds like a PR thing to me...
I'll reserve judgment until the dust settles.
It's not the registrar's job to be the police
It's not their job to knowingly aid and abet criminal behaviour either.
The way I see it, they've stopped doing business with people who they think are behaving unethically or illegally.If the whole issue had not been covered by the press and the Washington Post, I doubt that very much would have been done about this kind of activity. The way that Directi was linked to these operations was a PR disaster and it sometimes takes a disaster of this type to motivate change.
Regards...jmcc
I can see how innocent bystanders COULD get hurt in attempts to enforce ordinary business contract law -- for a current real example, see the problems with the Gentoo site over the last few days, apparently caused by financial disagreements between their host and their ISP, where Gentoo's data is being held hostage by other parties. But Directi may not have had much choice here. Apparently they were about to be fingered as co-conspirators or worse, for not enforcing the legal requirements for domain registration (such as, accurate information about the registrar). Presented with proof that their practices were enabling (at least) or abetting serial illegal domain registration, they could lose their position as registrar.
Who provides the criteria?
That was my first question too. I don't have domains involved in anything shady but I would absolutely never use a registrar who made a call like this. 1000's of the domains they suspended were undoubtedly owned by innocent parties and I would not appreciate being forced to waste time proving my case to the registrar.
falsified ‘Whois’ information.
Now there's a serious crime :-) It's not as if nearly 100% of whois information is crawled by spam bots or anything.
they've stopped doing business with people who they think are behaving unethically or illegally.
My bold.
As domain names are often compared to real estate, and most definitely appreciate in value quickly, it's not the same as stopping business, they are actually stealing something.
It's not the registrar's job to be the police
Yea, your right. They shouldn't have to. Just like the FEDS shouldn't have to go to cities and bust criminals when its the city police that should be doing it. Oh, wait, it is.
Well its not like the guys that give you the license to drive can take it away because they feel you are driving incorrectly. Oh wait, it is.
well I could keep doing this, but it would make me sound like an @$$, I think that is enough to prove a point.
The police (and FEDS) are specifically created to enforce rules. The registrar is NOT meant to enforce rules.
Directi has a history of using shady tactics to get domains that they did not deserve to have. I would not be surprised if under the guise of 'abuse' they picked up a nice sum of domains (with PPC dropping as it is).
But,what the heck, it's just domain names, so who expects fully fair treatment by anyone involved in the domain name system, right? :P
We can say that DirectI's actions are based upon their contracts and TOS but, absent notice and a prompt and fair opportunity to be heard by an impartial decision maker, things get sticky.
IF DirectI wasn't judicious this could backfire in a very expensive way for DirectI - resulting in all manner of lawsuits. I suspect DirectI was justified in the vast majority of cases, but it's hard to believe that they applied an individualized approach to passing judgment on all 175,000 domains.
Yet, if things were that bad that judgment on 175,000 domains was "easy" one has to wonder how long DirectI knew the details of what was going on and, despite that, allowed the situation to proceed and for DirectI to profit therefrom. What did it take for DirectI to finally take action? 100,000 "bad domains"? 125,000 bad domains? 150,000?
Apparently the tack action threshold was 175,000 domains.
[edited by: Webwork at 3:32 pm (utc) on Oct. 27, 2008]
In agreement to webwork, I would like to see how this pans out, and would like to see more documentation on how they did it, etc. And what they thought was malicious and what reports they used. I know they didn't investigate all 175k domains. they had to of gotten a list(s) from somewhere.
Directi has a HISTORY of abuse. Last time I checked, if a previous abuser does something suspicious, you don't end up lauding them for their 'great' move.
What did it take for DirectI to finally take action?Coverage in one of the top US newspapers and a lot of online news sites of Directi's involvement with these operations? Being portrayed as a beneficiary and facilitator of these operations? The kill or be killed option?
Regards...jmcc
I do not know about your site, of course, but mine is under attack 24/7. After thoroughly researching & digesting HostExploit's reports, and finding their download of the IP addresses of all the Hosts involved, I constructed IPTable-additions and added it to my site Firewall (documented on my site Forums under "Site Info & Diary"). Some of the results of that action are very interesting.
After 2 full days of operation, the number of visitors is reduced by about 10%, yet income is either steady or even up. There is one other result which should give every website operator pause for thought...
My site is concerned entirely with support for modems & contains a Downloads subdomain (drivers, firmware & info), responsible for a very large chunk of site bandwidth. Whilst traffic has reduced by 6% & 16% (Monday/Tuesday), bandwidth has reduced by 45% & 30%. This suggests to my mind that internet folks located within bad neighbourhoods have a far higher problem with their connections than is generally so.
The above makes good sense. Consider:
Investigation is essential to protect both parties involving in business.. the way we get a phone number, a driving license, a credit card..
WWW: wild wild Web; anyone anywhere can get domain or Web site and anyone anywhere delete it, without reason.
Complete process is faulty.
