I wrote about the fraudulent domain name sales listing attempts at Afternic that have triggered Fast Transfer authorization emails to be sent to GoDaddy customers over the past few days. This isn’t a new issue, but it seems to be more widespread now than it was previously.
I reached out to GoDaddy seeking comment about this, and a company representative responded to me today with a comment:
“Listing integrity is something we take seriously. We have an automated review system that flags domain names before they are listed for sale. We continue to refine our system. Once a domain is flagged, it is not listed. It is then added to a block list that requires a new lister to verify the ownership before it can be added.
You can verify this for domain names by searching at Afternic.com to see that it is not available for sale. Despite domain names being caught by our systems, the opt-in emails are being triggered simultaneously to registrants in this scenario, something that we’re working with our team to re-configure to not send until after it has cleared an active status.”
If you receive an authorization email from GoDaddy that seems out of the blue, do not click it. This will approve the listing on Afternic and that could be very bad.
Off the top of my head, I don’t recall hearing about unauthorized domain names being sold via Afternic and pulled from a GoDaddy account through Fast Transfer, but it doesn’t seem very far-fetched. Stay vigilant and be sure you do not authorize any domain names for Fast Transfer unless you are certain they’re your listings that you are approving.
Hopefully, GoDaddy and Afternic take additional steps to protect domain names and limit annoyance, frustration, and anxiety caused by these emails.
We get batches of these every few weeks when the next scammer tries on an attempt of mass-domain-theft.
This last week we’ve had in excess of 90 of them – 1 for every 4 character domain we hold.
Afternic/GD are either utterly clueless in understanding the problem or (much more likely based on their replies when I’ve reported it) actually complicit in this ongoing scam.
Either total incompetence or intentional, and in their reply they seem to not comprehend that these emails to “confirm afternic “ are not necessarily coming from godaddy but also from other registrars, in my case Dynadot
I’ve been getting the same emails from Dynadot with many names, seems to be names listed at Dan without a BIN, The names with a BIN automatically go into afternic. So I guess for unpriced names I would have to list directly with afternic,
Perhaps it’s Godaddy doing this to force us to list with BIN price. It’s the only explanation that makes sense
This shit is so easy for them to fix, they obviously don’t want to.
Sad to see a billion dollar company have such a flawed system like Afternic. Afternic should have been combined with Godaddy years ago.
Stuff like this should not be still happening! Not even the group from DAN can fix Afternic!
All the years we have given suggestions and feedback to GD but they don’t give a shit
So what the point
Godaddy has ruined domain sales network, killed uni, destroyed dan, ruined what decent parking was left, their brokers can’t keep up with the leads, it’s an absolute mess
When you have domains you registered over 25 years ago worth serious money you do not want to hear a godaddy rep say “do not click it. This will approve the listing on Afternic and that could be very bad.” I never liked godaddy and my portfolio was transferred to them when they bought uniregistry. I am assuming this only happens with godaddy customer’s since I have never used afternic. Any suggestions on a register who protects domains? I know from experience that even when your domain is locked with godaddy they will transfer it with fast transfer without your approval.
When afternic transfers a domain, you don’t even get an email it has left your account, that is Epik level scary.
That’s not true. I received one yesterday for a sale on 1/22.
The subject is “The transfer for [domain name] is done!
The message is:
Good news, the transfer of [domain name] to Afternic has completed!
What’s next?
We are currently scheduling your payout and we will send you an email within 1-3 business days to confirm once your funds have been sent.
Thank you,
Afternic Transaction Assurance Team