During the past few days, I have received quite a few emails via GoDaddy from what appears to be the same person or entity inquiring about different domain names I own. The emails are being sent via the GoDaddy Whois contact form. The other party generating these emails is using the “Interested in purchasing the domain” option.

When I received the first email, I sent a reply and did not hear a response. A follow-up email also yielded no reply. When I received a subsequent inquiry, my reply was “stop,” but I received additional inquiries on a different domain name this morning. In fact, I received four emails for the same domain name this morning.

With the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic still spreading throughout the United States and the world, companies have had to make adjustments, particularly as it relates to employees working out of the office. GoDaddy, with more than 9,000 employees, has had the bulk of its employees work from home since March of this year.

GoDaddy recently announced that most of its employees will continue to work from home through at least March of 2021. In areas of the world where working in the office is deemed safe, the company is allowing employees to return to the office. For example, employees in GoDaddy’s China office have already returned to the office.

There’s a trending post on Hacker News that accuses GoDaddy of front running domain names that are searched for on its website:

“searched a few days ago for felons.io, looked for unique names for simple game didn’t know if I wanted it or not
guess godaddy decided for me: 1 days old Created on 2020-09-16 by GoDaddy.com, LLC

just a warning if you have a special name do not use godaddy to check if its available”