More reasons to avoid GoDaddy (and, incidentally, Rackspace)

[unixronin]

As if mass cybersquatting, monetizing its customers' domain name ideas through its shell subsidiary Domains By Proxy, locking customers' domains to keep them from transferring to other registrars, actively conspiring in the theft of its own customers' domains, intentional violation of ICANN rules and regulations in order to extort additional money from customers, or many other complaints (some of which probably qualify as fraud) weren't sufficient reasons to avoid GoDaddy, it is now reported that GoDaddy stores customer account passwords in clear and will use them, without your knowledge or consent, to access private servers hosted with them.

Further, it transpires that GoDaddy just got hit with a class action suit by its own employees, alleging theft of employee bonus commissions, defrauding employees of overtime pay, violation of federal Fair Labor wage and hours standards, and wrongful termination of whistleblowers.

Just as an aside, it seems GoDaddy isn't the only hosting company storing customer passwords in the clear.  Rackspace does it too.

Comments

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear....and their customer service people have always been so nice to me. But then, I'm a lowly shared-hosting customer, nothing to see here, move along.

[glitch25.livejournal.com]

Heh.. yanno, I had heard someone recently extolling the virtues of GoDaddy about how nice they are and how good the service was. I think I about gave myself a hernia trying to hold back my laughter.

Between over-priced plans, lackluster services and control, and what I thought was pretty lousy customer service, I've been avoiding them like the plague for a long time.

I had heard about them fiddling with accounts. Made me glad I gave up on them a long while back.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

In related news, I understand there was a recent tiff between GoDaddy and Danica Patrick, who appears to have tired of GoDaddy using her for cheap soft-porn as a condition of her sponsorship contract.


Ah, the GoDaddy business model: "Ignore the shortcomings of our service, check out this chick's tits!"

[glitch25.livejournal.com]

Yeah.. Lets face it. If you want to get the geeks on board, you need soft porn with Danica McKeller. :-)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Is this the bit where I admit to not knowing who she is, and then you point and laugh? :)

[glitch25.livejournal.com]

If you eschew television, I certainly can't blame you. If you might have seen a series in the 80's called The Wonder Years, she played the girlfriend of the main character. Some years later, she went on to get a Mathematics degree from UCLA and now she's well known for both her math skills and for being a successful and attractive actress.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danica_McKellar

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Good on her. I've heard of the series, but that's all.

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

No... I borrowed one of her books from the library for Valkyrie and Pirate to read/use.

[lwj2.livejournal.com]

They aren't that spectacular. Nice legs, though.

However, I quote illustrator/artist Ruth Thompson when asked why she always has well-endowed women in her drawings: "Boobs sell."

As far as GoDaddy is concerned, I'm not surprised, I'd always had a vague feeling there was something not quite right with them.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I wasn't thinking so much of Danica Patrick there, as the earlier series of GoDaddy TV ads featuring the airheaded cheerleader type waving her generous assets at the camera through a thin T-shirt.

[lwj2.livejournal.com]

Must have missed those.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

You didn't miss much. Her bra size and apparent IQ together may have actually exceeded 100, but not by far.

[lwj2.livejournal.com]

I hope you weren't using the metric system ;)

[darthgeek.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, the company I work for now makes extensive use of their registrar and SSL business. Because it's 'cheaper'.

We had to fight hard to get them to use Verisign EV-SSL certificates for our customer facing portal sites. They kept complaining that it was 'so expensive'.

Bah.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I've always felt that any time a company engineer says "We need A", and the accountants come back and say "It's too expensive, you can have B", which costs 30% less but doesn't actually do what engineering needs, the company is doomed.

[darthgeek.livejournal.com]

We're slowly dragging them kicking and screaming into a mid-sized company mentality rather than the 'small startup' mentality they'd been operating under.

It's a slow process, but we're making headway.

[polaris93.livejournal.com]

It seems the banks aren't the only Bad Boys that have been screwing over the public lately. What a nice lot of bastards!