Godaddy lost a domain to a Dubai Hacker

I lost a valuable domain to a thief at Godaddy a couple years ago and Godaddy did nothing to halt the thief's transfer of the domain once he changed the account information. At the time of the theft I owned just under 500 domains there and the thief could have grabbed my entire portfolio but he just took www.3pd.biz. This story is all over the internet. I was only able to recover the domain by trapping the thief in a sting of sorts where I posed as a buyer. Under an assumed name I made contact and offered $1,000.00 for the domain. He accepted the offer. I waited a couple days and emailed him again stating that this story was all over the internet and that I could not buy the domain because it was stolen. I then approached him again as myself and told him that the second he sells the domain I was going to have him arrested so it was foolish to just keep my property. After several days he made contact and apologized for the theft and actually offered to return it!

It was on Easter 2007 that he turned over the account he created for the domain and I thanked and forgave him. I asked him how he did it and he would only disclose that a friend at Godaddy actually stole it and he was just trying to sell it for him.

If you lose a domain to theft you are totally screwed. ICANN the body that governs domains will not intervene on your behalf unless you have about $10,000.00 to spend on an attorney in Europe that has ICANN or WIPO experience. Once you pay ICANN's fees they impanel a body of "experts" to decide your case.

Godaddy did absolutely nothing to help me with this matter. I sent countless emails and made several calls trying to get them to investigate or at least stop the transfer while there was time and they couldn't have cared less. They said it was out of their hands even though they were in the driver's seat. I wrote the company's president and posted this all over the internet and in the end I never received a single apology from anyone at Godaddy. Every time I hear about how honorable Godaddy's founder is I just laugh. This company is certainly no symbol of integrity and their products are just crap. Their user interface and checkout process is so cluttered with spam that its like driving down the Las Vegas strip on acid. At every turn there's more and more cheesy upselling.

The only reason these guys remain in business is their loss leader, cheap domains.

And before any Godaddy reps attempt to call me a liar feel free to check me out. I am rather well respected in the product development community with over 200 products on the market and over 20 U.S. and foreign patents to my name.

All the best,

Jack Durban,

Pres. Vorelco