Namecheap has a large presence in Ukraine, and many of its employees work in offices around the country. A look at Namecheap’s job opening page gives an idea of the breadth of the company’s footprint in Ukraine.
Over the weekend, Namecheap CEO Richard Kirkendall spoke out about the Russian invasion of Ukraine:
War is always a terrible thing, it’s even worse when many of our own team members are on the ground. Our company stands firmly against Russian aggression and war crimes being committed against the people of Ukraine. Insuring the safety of our colleagues is our number one priority
— Richard Kirkendall (@NamecheapCEO) February 26, 2022
This morning, I learned that Namecheap implemented several actions:
- Namecheap stopped taking payments from Russia for its products and services, and the company is not allowing any new Russian customers to buy from them.
- Namecheap told its existing Russian customers that they need to move their services off of their platform immediately.
- Namecheap stopped selling Russian and Belarusian TLDs.
- Russian IP addresses are being blocked from accessing the company’s website.
In response to a customer’s comment about the impact these actions will have on customers who are Russian citizens but don’t have involvement in the Ukraine situation, Richard apologized for the inconvenience but held firm on the company’s position:
I apologize for that and I sympathize with you and others like you but until your authoritarian government stops committing human rights abuses and engaging in war crimes, this is a policy decision we will stand by.
— Richard Kirkendall (@NamecheapCEO) February 27, 2022
Kudos to NameCheap for supporting their staff in Ukraine!!!
“We stand with our friends and colleagues in Ukraine during this heinous assault on their freedom, their independence and their lives. We are actively supporting our resilient team and are doing what we can to insure their safety.:
That why I have my domains and hosting at NameCheap….thank you!!! for your excellent customer service support!!!
FYI- namecheap is offering a good deal on transfer and hosting!!!
It’s Russian aggression, not “Russian aggression”.
How about Russian self defense, John. Why do we need to have missiles at Russias border and expand NATO to Ukraine? Why cant we offer a security pledge? Kennedy balked at Kruschev and missiles in Cuba on similar pretense. Lastly, we installed a puppet regime in Ukraine with our fomented Orange revolution in 2013 under Obama. Lets not pretend We overthrew a legitimate democracy with our heinous meddling. So tired of all the lap dogs for the NWO. You may know domain law but you clearly ignorant on historical reality.
I think he’s part of the tribe that does all this rubbish around the world.
But in the event that he really does not know what’s going on, I’ll say this:
We are told that in (insert demonized enemy nation here) that they are all brainwashed by their evil governments and media. Yet how many of those TV watching know-it-alls have done extensive research to figure out if it is THEIR television and governments doing it to THEM? They don’t have the intelligence/time/inclination to go down that path… they simply keep pushing the stuff they’ve been told.
But congrats to you Marvin, you have educated your way out of the propaganda. We’re a growing and unstoppable segment of the population.
P.S. Namecheap lost me as a customer when they did their “No covid misinformation allowed” policy. (Translation: no countering the official media/government lies about this nothing virus and the oh-so-healthy-for-us vacks.) They’ve exposed their hand.
It’s going to be hard for Russians to move their domains elsewhere if they can’t access the Namecheap site
That’s kinda the point.
Companies who’ve affiliated with Russians will be able to make their moves.
Companies based in Russia will have to wait until the ban is lifted, which will not be until the Russians fully withdraw.
That’s the thing about committing to a war unprovoked: you can’t get everything you want.
I support Ukraine in this conflict, and largely support private business when it comes to who they decide to do business with, but….
This –
“Namecheap told its existing Russian customers that they need to move their services off of their platform immediately.”
and this –
“Russian IP addresses are being blocked from accessing the company’s website.”
Don’t really work together. How are customers supposed to move if they don’t have access to the website?
Brad
Oh boy. Everyone just lapping up the Western NWO LGBQABC123 propaganda. One thing Covid19 and all the mandates taught me is that America suxks and is as authoritarian as it gets. Take the poison jab or lose ur job. Im done buying into the nonsense.
Fuck off, you commit a war crime, you deserve a consequence, you imbecile.
Right on, let me know how the ICU is – have always wondered.
Love,
LGBQABC123
1. Why is this decision not published on namecheap’s website for record purposes?
2. What exactly is namecheap trying to archieve?
3. Any ICANN provision for this type of action?
4. Can you right lawless with lawlessness?
5. Before outbound transfer, Is namecheap ready to make refunds for recently registered domains currently its custody or domains with recently extended expiration dates?
More questions than answers.
How is their response lawless? It’s in a way a form of complementing the sanctioning that many governments around the world are imposing. This might actually be a useful one, too.
Who pays for the forced transfer?
I mean, for domains with valid expiration dates?
What happens to domains not transferred out before the deadline, namecheap sells/deletes/confiscates them?
I still can’t see the decision nor answers published on Namecheap’s website. Just curious.
In my opinion, like many economic sanctions applied by various governments, these actions by Namecheap mostly negatively impact the average Russian, who often does not even agree with their government’s actions. Seems like a rather ill-considered approach. When the US illegally and unilaterally invaded Iraq for example, imagine if companies similarly blocked services from Americans, many of whom disagreed with the war. I don’t think average citizens should be hurt for the actions of their corrupt leaders, regardless of if they’re Russian, American, North Korean, Iranian, etc.
Financial sanctions are something that the leaders of Russia can evade, through abstractly blaming foreign actors for bad behaviour. These, however, are explicitly going to declare a very clear message to the engineers and computing specialists across Russia that the rest of the world is against what their government is trying to do. It will get their attention. Because of the state of propaganda in Russia, there are few ways of actually getting the message across, and this one, the difficulty it will impose on Russian businesses – the class with which Putin mostly closely identifies – will have exactly the effect of impacting his popularity because of the effect on their way of life.
To your point about “what if they sanctioned us for invading Iraq” I wish they would have. Maybe Bush and Cheney would have given it an extra moment’s thought if there had been international consequences against their invasion.
Totally agree with you!
I’d suggest you to see this recent video from a US citizen living in Kiev, explaining what’s really going on in Ukraine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vdiEABLFoo&t=1129s
To put it short: Putin is there for pacification and denazification, since Zelensky, a puppet put in charge in 2014 with the help of the US gov, US-UK secret services and their bosses of the neoliberal elites, has attacked and killed Russian minorities for 8 years, with the help of neonazi militia, trained by the US military. Furthermore, NATO-US provocations, encircling and putting missiles a very short range from Russia borders, for years, more and more, are threatening Russia own security.
Ucrainian government is responsible for war crimes, not Ucrainian citizens, not Russians.
Namecheap top management is biased because is a friend of the same US neoliberal elites wanting to destabilize and loot Russian resources.
It”s another US proxy war, using now also their political accomplices in the EU.
Lies and manipulations in the mainstream media are no surprise, since they are owned by the same liberal elites targeting the destabilization of Russia.
I have only received their email today, but I am unable to log in – the SMS code for log in just won’t arrive 🙁
Both legs mangled from an air-cav op against Soviets long ago and far away. Can’t function properly without a prosthetic. Every step = pain.
I did my bit, now NameCheap fellows need to do theirs. Instead of attacking civilian domainers, they need to shut up and man up. It’s that simple.
NameCheap needs to answer the following questions –
1.) What happens if someone is not able to access their account to transfer their domains? You said you blocked Russian IP. Forcing someone to find a way to access their account is an undue burden.
2.) What if someone can’t afford or is just not able to physically make payment (because of sanctions)? What happens to a domain with time left on the registration?
Is NameCheap going to put it into pending delete? Are they going to suspend it?
I also want to hear NameCheap pledge not to make a profit off these assets. If this is your stance, you should have absolutely no problem pledging to not profit of any off these domains when/if they expire or are deleted.
They need to publish the names of Olga and their properties and addresses
1/ If your organization is thinking of shutting down its online services to Russia, here are some things you may want to think about before you hastily roll out changes that can create impact beyond what you intended.
2/ First of all you need to figure out how you’re deciding to shut down service. Russian IP address? Note that Beeline is a Russian mobile carrier with an extensive footprint in neighboring countries, but they often route traffic through Russia and/or use Russian-assigned IPs.
3/ OK, maybe you’ll go after people who registered with an email address in the .ru top level domain. That won’t catch anyone in Russia who uses Gmail but will catch people outside of Russia who use Yandex (and a lot of people in Russian-speaking countries use Yandex).
4/ Ok, ok, if none of those work, PHONE NUMBER then! Only one problem: Kazakhstan shares the +7 country code with Russia, and they have nothing to do with any of this.
5/ It can be a significant engineering effort to block services in Russia, whether required by sanctions or whether independently decided by your organization. Given the pace at which sanctions are moving, it’s a good idea to start thinking about how you’d do this if required.
6/ Toll free numbers work in Abkhazia and Kazakhstan along with Russia, but there are carve-outs for Kazakhstan in the numbering plan. If you have a phone number, you can potentially avoid *some* collateral damage. Details in this ITU document: https://itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/oth/02/02/T020200006F0001PDFE.pdf
7/ Consider how you’ll deal with Russians living abroad. There are lots of them, especially students! They may have a Russian phone number and Russian email, but not be physically present in Russia.
8/ Some geographies are easy to cut off of services. Russia, not so much–at least without huge collateral damage. It’s geographically the largest country in the world, and their communications infrastructure has a significant sphere of influence in neighboring ex-USSR countries.
9/ Ask the right questions if you’re impacted by sanctions. Is providing services at all prohibited, or only providing *paid* services? If the latter, can you reasonably rely on your bank to block payments that would violate sanctions?
10/ If these conversations aren’t already happening in your organization, they likely will soon. Start thinking now about whether you should, and even if you think you shouldn’t, how you’d do it if legally required.
Source:
Thread from TProphet @TProphet 6:32 AM · Mar 3, 2022·Locked account. https://twitter.com/TProphet/status/1499196035637280768