I woke up to many more emails than normal this morning. A large percentage of those were Google Alerts and other emails about GoDaddy’s initial public offering. GoDaddy stock is set to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange today under the GDDY stock ticker symbol.

This is a major milestone for the company, which is valued “at around $4.5 billion, including debt,” according to Rec/Code. There have been quite a few articles written by financial publications with opinions on the company, its valuation, and the IPO. Here is an assortment of articles:

• GoDaddy IPO Not a Sure Bet – US News and World Report
• Why GoDaddy’s IPO Shares Look Cheap – Money
• Why We PASS On GoDaddy IPO (GDDY) – Seeking Alpha
• Why You Should Stay Away From This Tech IPO – Motley Fool
• The GoDaddy IPO is looking hotter than expected – Business Insider

With GoDaddy’s IPO news, there has also

Market Watch reported that GoDaddy hopes to “raise up to $418 million” in its initial public offering. The report stated that the company plans to offer shares priced somewhere between $17-19, although I would imagine that number could change as the GoDaddy IPO gets closer. Based on the IPO numbers, the company market cap would be “approaching $3 billion.”

I am uncertain about whether I am going to try and have my financial advisor get an allocation of shares when the company goes public. I also don’t know if I am going to purchase shares of the company once its starts trading on the New York Stock Exchange (under the ticker symbol GDDY).

I am not much of a stock picker, but one thing I know is that a stock’s performance doesn’t necessarily jive with the company’s products and services. There are many factors that play into the valuation of a stock and how it trades, and just because GoDaddy is good (or bad) for you doesn’t mean you will make money with the stock.

Deciding whether to buy the stock is

I’ve written a number of articles about phishing attempts made to induce GoDaddy customers into giving up their login credentials. I think phishing is one of the leading causes of domain name theft, and it appears  to have reached a crescendo in the last year. It seems that domain theft isn’t the only objective of phishing attackers.

Jeremy Kirk published an article on  CIO.com warning that attackers are using hijacked domain registrar accounts to  infect computers with malware.  “Hundreds of hacked domain name accounts registered through GoDaddy are being used as part of a highly effective campaign using the Angler exploit kit to infect computers with malware,” wrote Kirk. The article cited a blog post written by Nick Biasini, an outreach engineer with Cisco Systems.

Kirk went on to explain what is happening with the subdomains: