Name.com's DNS editor won't let you remove the DNS record that serves the ads. You need to switch to a real DNS provider.
CloudFlare is a free DNS provider - generally people use it to hook up the CloudFlare security and auto-CDN system, but you just need it for DNS hosting.
1 Create an account and add your domain: www.cloudflare.com
2 Disable the orange cloud icons
3 Follow the steps that tell you to switch your name servers - that makes CloudFlare your DNS provider
4 Go to "Edit DNS Settings"
5 Find the "A * (some IP)" record, and remove it
That's it. No more parker ads. DNS and name server changes can take a while to propagate to the whole web so the change can take up to an hour to affect everyone.
As an anecdotal counterpoint, I'm an extremely happy Name.com customer. I transfered several domains to them a year or so ago from GoDaddy. They support two-factor authentication, their interface is uncluttered, I pay them less money than I paid GoDaddy, and I haven't had a single issue. I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for a registrar.
That being said, I don't use them for DNS. If this is a feature of their nameservers, I do find it strange that they don't offer a way to opt out (other than using alternative nameservers).
This is what initially drew me to name.com, they seemed to have their act together. Unfortunately there just isn't a way to fully evaluate a situation without trying it first.
Just as I don't give GoDaddy business any longer due to their poor corporate ethics, I can't recommend name.com as a registrar because I must take into account the way in which they run the rest of their business. I will be ceasing my relationship with name.com as soon as reasonably possible.
It's a simple case of the company lawyer(s) overdoing a CYA clause and standing by it. However, the company seems to have gladly taken your call to discuss it with you, and then consult their lawyers regarding the potential for a change. While you didn't get what you want, it seems like they were fairly considerate.
So, just change the nameservers after registration and move on. I understand if you disagree with their policy, but there is nothing forcing you to keep their nameservers beyond the 5 minutes it takes you to change them post-registration.
I have nothing bad to say about their support, and I hopefully made that clear in my original post. That doesn't, however, relieve them of their responsibility in my opinion to provide good services.
The problem I have is that it wasn't immediately apparent that I was serving ads on my domain because they weren't respecting the way in which DNS is supposed to work--basically typo-squatting me.
I agree. There is likely no legal precedent. Someone or a consumer rights group with have to take a registar/hoster to court to litigate the actual language and what the related rights are.
Until then they can and will insert arbitrary rules to their advantage... as they should? Maybe, I dunno, depends on whose ethics you're living by.
I've used name.com for many years and have always been satisfied with their service. The advertising the author is complaining about only shows up if you do not configure the DNS records or name servers after buying the domain. Usually I spend 30 seconds setting this up as soon as I buy the domain, so the advertising doesn't even cross my mind.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought this practice was pretty standard across the industry. The "unscrupulous" registrar tactics that I'm more concerned about are registrars that take domains when they sense demand (such as from searching or whois lookups) and hold it from you until you pay a premium. I've never had this issue with name.com and have found it very easy to transfer domains with them as well.
I configured the DNS immediately. However, one thing I'm not willing to do is set up a wildcard A record for my hosted zone when the request should be returning an nxdomain instead. There is no way in name.com's setting to enable that.
On an ethical level this is closer to typo-squatting, something that there are rules against.
Actually, this isn't just if you don't setup DNS records for your domain name. If you configure some subdomains with name.com, then all other subdomains for that domain go to a parked page.
For example, my wife's website is jesleephotos.com. The subdomains store and www (along with some others that I don't wish to advertise :) go to the correct destination. The subdomain stuff, x, random, mail, etc all go to parked domain.
I might end up adding an A record for *.jesleephotos.com as a catchall and point it to some IP address I can get that will forward everything to www.
I know that GoDaddy and Network Solutions both do the same thing or at least have in the past. I've never really given it much thought because I didn't figure the 20 or so ad impressions that a brand new domain was going to provide wasn't really worth much.
I'm far more bothered by the huge variance in pricing from one registrar to another for the same domain.
The nonstandard part seems to be that the owner of the site ends up being responsible for any of the ads that show up on the parked page. So if I were to register kidsexchange.com and forgot about I would be liable for any ads being shown there containing child pornography.
I too am with Namecheap after getting totally disgusted by Godaddy's terrible interface. I'm very happy with it. Plus, I think Namecheap was actually cheaper than Godaddy for my .net, anyway.
I've had several domains with Namecheap - never had any problems whatsoever with them, and as far as I know they don't have the lack-of-ethics baggage several of these other really questionable registrars seem to have.
I estimate I helped 50-some people to switch from GoDaddy to Namecheap after GoDaddy's last meltdown. I haven't heard any complaints, and they're all happy not to be doing business with the likes of GoDaddy any more.
This is disheartening to read because I have been using name.com for over year now and over, I had been happy. I did check one of my domains and found this issue, but since for most of my domains, I don't have DNS managed by the registrar, it doesn't affect me that much.
My hands down favorite is Fabulous.com right now. Caveat is they cater to large portfolios and certain extensions (com/net/org/info). They don't screw you over on anything though. Even if your names expire and someone buys it through drop process, you get a cut of the sale. They don't keep any domains for themselves. Prices (for portfolio holders, retail side is as expensive as Netsol/register.com) are barely above cost.
Since Fabulous isn't available for most of you (unless you want to pay retail). I would recommend NameCheap.
Fabulous requires that your portfolio either makes $750 a month (with their parking services) or have at least 750 domains with them.
I have a personal goal of one day consolidating my domains with at Fabulous :) I'm getting there. In the short term I have my own private label registrar through Directi that isn't to shabby.
I think I'm paying around $8.50 USD per domain, with privacy included.
Bulk management is a bit of a pain - but that's what DomainManager is for :)
I've been using iwantmyname.com and I have yet to have any issues. Sorry to hear about your troubles, Nathan. DNS hijacking is bad enough, but the fact that they claim you're the one who is liable for what they happen to put on their parked pages is completely unethical.
I use DynDNS for all my Registrar and DNS-related stuff; I couldn't be happier with them. Whenever I change a record, it populates hella-fast; and considering how wishy-washy I am about sticking with an email provider, it's very helpful.
I am, technically. A few years ago, I donated $20 to EveryDNS for an account that never expires. DynDNS bought EveryDNS last year and have so far honored that deal.
From the looks of it their DNS hosting is $30 per domain (let me know if I am seeing that wrong). As just a small entrepreneur and someone working for a low hourly wage that is a lot of money, especially with the 14 domains I have.
I've heard good things about their service, and would love to try it, but unfortunately it is out of my reach.
I use name.com for quite a few domains. They have a very convenient way to do bulk changes, so you can, for example, select 50 domains at once, and tell name.com to change all of them to your name servers. They email you a few minutes later when they've done it. I always just change them to linode as soon as I buy a domain.
I don't begrudge them this income stream from people who buy domains but don't do anything with them for awhile. What's the harm?
> I don't begrudge them this income stream from people who buy domains but don't do anything with them for awhile. What's the harm?
There are 2 main issues I have with this:
1. It's not "unused domains" that get this treatment. It's any domain that uses their DNS. I had several active sites and was shocked to find that blahblahblah.mydomain.com pointed to one of their spam pages.
2. If you went to spammysubdomain.realcompany.com and found a spam page, who would you think was responsible for it, realcompany.com or realcompany.com's registrar? I'm guessing almost everyone would think that the company themselves did it. By name.com doing this for active domains, they risk damaging the domain holder's reputation, for anyone who happens to stumble on to one of the spammy subdomains.
The harm is that they're effectively typo-squatting my domain, as well as all the rest of their customers' domains which don't use wildcard A records. They're breaking DNS.
I've managed thousands of domains over dozens of countries. This is NOT standard practice and should never be accepted to be so. After using many, many registrars there are only a few to recommend..
- Namecheap (my favourite, all my domains are here, excellent customer service - the Zappos of domains - instant support, live chat 24/7, friendly/educated staff, and just a real pleasure to use)
- Domain Monster - UK/European based domains. Good services, good response times
- Europe Registry / Instra - used this commercially, more expensive, not the greatest of control panels, but more than likely you will be appointed an account manager (hence good for businesses) and pretty much have the largest database of domain extensions to register against. If you are interested in moving to them, I can also put you in touch with a very friendly chap who can help you make the move.
I hope this information helps - reply me up on @o6uoq if you'd like to chat about anything else :)
I know I'm late to this thread, but I'm curious: how come actual entrepreneurs, people that get things done, do not set up a catch-all the Record Host "*.example.com" immediately after setting up their domains? I did that with mine (not worthy of being published), with Name.com, and had no domain parking ever.
By the way, to me the most incredible part is this widespread practice of domain parking by default and without sharing revenues, not the threatening legalese. Not much domain ownership there!
I sometimes use Bluehost for domain registration and they do the same thing. I don't really have a problem with it because I know that once a domain is registered, my work isn't done until I've pointed nameservers somewhere else or set up a site on Bluehost and changed the default.html.
For $10 a year, I don't mind doing this.
Having said that, I do agree that it's hard to find a good domain registrar that covers lots of TLD, has a good interface and runs an ethical business.
I agree that the situation is legally impossible: basically they are trying to hold you responsible for code they add and which you cannot touch. Won't keep up in court.
Secondly it does not look good for the site owner, as some have a few subdomains and users might make a typo. 3rdly, Godaddy and others also do this, but at least they 'share' any 'profit'.
Anyway, I just got my first few domains at name.com and just forwarded them to another domain. No spampages.
Cheers
The best domain registrar of which I'm aware -- everyone I know who's used it has been happy with it -- is http://nearlyfreespeech.net/. I've also used DynDNS and been very happy with them; someone else mentioned them as well.
NFS doesn't make it obvious that they do domain registration -- you have to click through to "services" to see it.
Ive been using http://Dynadot.com Its run by developers. They are awesome. Make it really easy to manage your domains and get new ones. Give it a shot - youre bound to love it. (no i do not work for them)
TLDR; name.com will insert a page under your domain, against your will, that may or may not have illegal material on it. If it does, YOU ARE LIABLE! Fucking ridiculous.
Wouldn't creating a wildcard subdomain prevent it from hitting one of their parked pages?
Why is there no one on HN that runs a registrar? Seems like there could be room for a startup here that could compete on pricing and offer some unique services.
Judging by the information on the ICANN and Verisign sites, there are quite steep financial requirements to fulfill and paperwork to submit to become an accredited registrar.
[+] [-] jtwb|15 years ago|reply
Name.com's DNS editor won't let you remove the DNS record that serves the ads. You need to switch to a real DNS provider.
CloudFlare is a free DNS provider - generally people use it to hook up the CloudFlare security and auto-CDN system, but you just need it for DNS hosting.
1 Create an account and add your domain: www.cloudflare.com
2 Disable the orange cloud icons
3 Follow the steps that tell you to switch your name servers - that makes CloudFlare your DNS provider
4 Go to "Edit DNS Settings"
5 Find the "A * (some IP)" record, and remove it
That's it. No more parker ads. DNS and name server changes can take a while to propagate to the whole web so the change can take up to an hour to affect everyone.
Edit: this is the "*" record you need to remove: http://i.imgur.com/jc48t.png
[+] [-] nbpoole|15 years ago|reply
That being said, I don't use them for DNS. If this is a feature of their nameservers, I do find it strange that they don't offer a way to opt out (other than using alternative nameservers).
[+] [-] nathanhammond|15 years ago|reply
Just as I don't give GoDaddy business any longer due to their poor corporate ethics, I can't recommend name.com as a registrar because I must take into account the way in which they run the rest of their business. I will be ceasing my relationship with name.com as soon as reasonably possible.
[+] [-] sjs382|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] randall|15 years ago|reply
Pretty lame of them to do though.
[+] [-] endtwist|15 years ago|reply
So, just change the nameservers after registration and move on. I understand if you disagree with their policy, but there is nothing forcing you to keep their nameservers beyond the 5 minutes it takes you to change them post-registration.
[+] [-] nathanhammond|15 years ago|reply
The problem I have is that it wasn't immediately apparent that I was serving ads on my domain because they weren't respecting the way in which DNS is supposed to work--basically typo-squatting me.
[+] [-] metageek|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josephv|15 years ago|reply
Until then they can and will insert arbitrary rules to their advantage... as they should? Maybe, I dunno, depends on whose ethics you're living by.
[+] [-] brucehart|15 years ago|reply
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought this practice was pretty standard across the industry. The "unscrupulous" registrar tactics that I'm more concerned about are registrars that take domains when they sense demand (such as from searching or whois lookups) and hold it from you until you pay a premium. I've never had this issue with name.com and have found it very easy to transfer domains with them as well.
[+] [-] nathanhammond|15 years ago|reply
On an ethical level this is closer to typo-squatting, something that there are rules against.
[+] [-] varikin|15 years ago|reply
For example, my wife's website is jesleephotos.com. The subdomains store and www (along with some others that I don't wish to advertise :) go to the correct destination. The subdomain stuff, x, random, mail, etc all go to parked domain.
I might end up adding an A record for *.jesleephotos.com as a catchall and point it to some IP address I can get that will forward everything to www.
[+] [-] PetrolMan|15 years ago|reply
I'm far more bothered by the huge variance in pricing from one registrar to another for the same domain.
[+] [-] ambiguity|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imrobert|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Undergrads|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fernandose|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jff|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foxylad|15 years ago|reply
But you do wonder about the name... given they're a domain name company you'd think they'd have a better one.
[+] [-] logjam|15 years ago|reply
I estimate I helped 50-some people to switch from GoDaddy to Namecheap after GoDaddy's last meltdown. I haven't heard any complaints, and they're all happy not to be doing business with the likes of GoDaddy any more.
[+] [-] varikin|15 years ago|reply
I guess I have to mull this over.
[+] [-] ohashi|15 years ago|reply
My hands down favorite is Fabulous.com right now. Caveat is they cater to large portfolios and certain extensions (com/net/org/info). They don't screw you over on anything though. Even if your names expire and someone buys it through drop process, you get a cut of the sale. They don't keep any domains for themselves. Prices (for portfolio holders, retail side is as expensive as Netsol/register.com) are barely above cost.
Since Fabulous isn't available for most of you (unless you want to pay retail). I would recommend NameCheap.
[+] [-] AlexC04|15 years ago|reply
I have a personal goal of one day consolidating my domains with at Fabulous :) I'm getting there. In the short term I have my own private label registrar through Directi that isn't to shabby.
I think I'm paying around $8.50 USD per domain, with privacy included.
Bulk management is a bit of a pain - but that's what DomainManager is for :)
[+] [-] epenn|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrockway|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m0nastic|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trafficlight|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zandor|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] X-Istence|15 years ago|reply
I've heard good things about their service, and would love to try it, but unfortunately it is out of my reach.
[+] [-] Locke1689|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cpenner461|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdx|15 years ago|reply
I don't begrudge them this income stream from people who buy domains but don't do anything with them for awhile. What's the harm?
[+] [-] hayley|15 years ago|reply
There are 2 main issues I have with this:
1. It's not "unused domains" that get this treatment. It's any domain that uses their DNS. I had several active sites and was shocked to find that blahblahblah.mydomain.com pointed to one of their spam pages.
2. If you went to spammysubdomain.realcompany.com and found a spam page, who would you think was responsible for it, realcompany.com or realcompany.com's registrar? I'm guessing almost everyone would think that the company themselves did it. By name.com doing this for active domains, they risk damaging the domain holder's reputation, for anyone who happens to stumble on to one of the spammy subdomains.
[+] [-] nathanhammond|15 years ago|reply
Typo-squatting is addressed by both the ACPA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticybersquatting_Consumer_Pro...) and the UDRP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute-Res...).
And worse, you're held responsible for the content of that page.
[+] [-] chrisbolt|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] o6uoq|15 years ago|reply
- Namecheap (my favourite, all my domains are here, excellent customer service - the Zappos of domains - instant support, live chat 24/7, friendly/educated staff, and just a real pleasure to use)
- Domain Monster - UK/European based domains. Good services, good response times
- Europe Registry / Instra - used this commercially, more expensive, not the greatest of control panels, but more than likely you will be appointed an account manager (hence good for businesses) and pretty much have the largest database of domain extensions to register against. If you are interested in moving to them, I can also put you in touch with a very friendly chap who can help you make the move.
I hope this information helps - reply me up on @o6uoq if you'd like to chat about anything else :)
[+] [-] Apocryphon|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathanhammond|15 years ago|reply
I can't speak from experience but I've heard good things about them.
[+] [-] yourcelf|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bartman|15 years ago|reply
And of course they don't do any of these shady things common with big-name US registrars - it's your domain, they just provide DNS and registration.
[+] [-] Niten|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dustingetz|15 years ago|reply
this is the market equilibrium, in any industry, for companies that compete on price.
[+] [-] ez77|15 years ago|reply
By the way, to me the most incredible part is this widespread practice of domain parking by default and without sharing revenues, not the threatening legalese. Not much domain ownership there!
[+] [-] tknows|15 years ago|reply
For $10 a year, I don't mind doing this.
Having said that, I do agree that it's hard to find a good domain registrar that covers lots of TLD, has a good interface and runs an ethical business.
[+] [-] Biker|15 years ago|reply
Secondly it does not look good for the site owner, as some have a few subdomains and users might make a typo. 3rdly, Godaddy and others also do this, but at least they 'share' any 'profit'.
Anyway, I just got my first few domains at name.com and just forwarded them to another domain. No spampages. Cheers
[+] [-] scythe|15 years ago|reply
NFS doesn't make it obvious that they do domain registration -- you have to click through to "services" to see it.
[+] [-] paulocal|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lurchpop|15 years ago|reply
Wouldn't creating a wildcard subdomain prevent it from hitting one of their parked pages?
[+] [-] duck|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quicksilver03|15 years ago|reply