US Secret Service n GoDaddy Takedown 1

Posted by JD 02/18/2012 at 04:00

GoDaddy and the US Secret Service are at it again, according to Ars. They took another web service domain down.

Here’s what that article says:

  • JotForm had their DNS records redirected to NS1.SUSPENDED-FOR.SPAM-AND-ABUSE.COM – GoDaddy did this.
    the site had been suspended as part of an ongoing investigation
  • US Secret Service was too busy to work with JotForm to resolve the issue – WHATEVER THE ISSUE WAS. JotForm contacted the agent in charger and offered:
    this is a matter of urgency, and we are ready to cooperate fully.
  • US Secret Service is not saying whether a court order was involved. According to GoDaddy, they sometimes takes action to prevent further harm being caused by a website hosted on our servers without a court order.
  • JotForm customers have decided to move their services to internal servers. Many have made nasty public comments, since their customer care/service apps were broken due to this action.

Since their domain was not working, JotForm created a new domain and send an email to all their customer to redirect to the new domain where everything worked. This is why DNS is not the appropriate level for SOPA and similar anti-piracy efforts to work. Creating a new domain and redirecting traffic is relatively easy, just a hassle for the people and business involved.

Later the DNS record was restored by GoDaddy. Nobody, not the US-SS or GoDaddy, contacted JotForm to let them know.

The Secret Service has also launched an internal review to “make sure all our policies and procedures were followed” in the matter.

I wonder how many customers and potential customers JotForm has lost due to this heavy handed action? A mulit-million USD Canadian company said:

“They have been very reliable. However because of what has happened now we will have to implement an internally hosted solution to guarantee this will not happen again and ensure we will not loose [sic] our data. I will now have to question purchasing any more services from US internet related providers.”

Nice move US-Government.

As most readers know, I’m not a fan of 3rd party hosted web services.

Most of my prior articles do not point out that governments and Domain Registrars could collude to destroy a business too. I guess that’s a new risk.

  1. JD 03/01/2012 at 18:07

    The US Government oversteps again and seized a domain again.

    • Hosted outside the USA.
    • Purchased outside the USA.
    • Owned by citizens of non-US countries.
    • Living outside the USA.

    Here’s an article from Forbes with more details.

    This time, it wasn’t GoDaddy, rather Verisign is reported to have done the dirty work.

    No .com, .org, .net seems to be safe from US oversteps. ICANN is claiming this isn’t their job since they don’t sell domain names.

    We need to stop this abuse of power. I’m all in favor of stopping illegal activities within your jurisdiction. Cutting off the money transfers seems easier to me, but perhaps I’m just dumb that way?

    Nice move US-Government.