Earlier this morning the registrar for perl.org - DirectI/ResellerClub - decided to suspend the domain. They got one(!) report that it was “involved in phising activities”; which sounds like a spammer sent a mail pretending to be from perl.org.
This is the mail I got a few hours ago:
We received a complaint about your domain name perl.org being involved in phishing activities. Using domain names for any such activity, is strictly against Registrar PublicDomainRegistry.com’s AUP.
On account of the breach of the PublicDomainRegistry.com DomainRegistrant Agreement (available within your Control Panel at Help -> Legal Agreements) we have Suspended this domain name.
Very clever. In particular doing it on a Saturday morning! Also note the exquisite details that allows us to respond (that’s sarcasm, there obviously was no detail). In particular it’s insane because if it actually was happening we’d want to stop it, but they give us no help for that. Lots of DNS resolver will have the domain cached for a day or two, so just turning off the domain wouldn’t protect people. Did I mention incompetence?
They actually did this stunt with the xrl.us domain (the short domain for the metamark service) some time ago. That time they also didn’t communicate anything or seem to care much about the disruption they caused. Foolishly thought they’d be able to manage the other domains.
I’ve recommended DirectI in the past, but obviously no more. They have very good pricing and a decent web interface, but clearly they are useless for anything more important than parked “to be used later” domains. If you want to turn off one of their customers, just open a free email account and send some abuse complaints. It sounds like you just need to include your targets email address in the abuse complaint. Works out well if your competitors are using them for their business!
I’ve opened a ticket with them which is the only sort of contact they allow. Being the weekend now I don’t know when they’ll respond, much less fix it. Anyone have a contact at DirectI / Resellerclub?
Also - anyone have tips for how to as automatically as possible transfer a bunch of domains from them to OpenSRS?
Update - it’s back now - they say they suspended it by mistake while suspending other domains. Unbelievable.
