B) The top-level domains offered here are absolute garbage and are generally seen as problematic. See A.
C) Freenom has a lot of power as the holder of its namespace. Don't like that? Bring it up with ICANN.
Because the Internet is built around a lot of abstractions that only make sense in light of the historical context at the time the technology was originally adopted, it really doesn't lend itself to being friendly to newbies. These people are actively preyed upon by a hostile industry full of shady operators.
Oh funny story. I have a .tk domain with freenom (used to be with dot.tk before the Dutch invaded, I guess) that was a free domain and I broke the ToS by not setting an A record for it. Unfortunately for me I had an MX record pointed to my email and some low value accounts registered to it that were now locked out to me.
Determined to get this domain back, I tried all email contact methods and this failed. Never once received a response to an email asking for help. However, I did search around and discovered a phone number.
This began months of me calling this number and speaking to the same Dutch woman asking about unsuspending this domain so I could purchase it. Every once in awhile I called her back during Dutch business hours (so late night for me) and had a conversation with her about it. Finally after around 4 months of persistence I got the domain back and was able to register it.
From the article: "When you get the domain, it will be added to your account but when your website starts to get a lot of traffic, Freenom will remove the domain from your account without notifying you and then put it on sale. You won't be able to get the domain back unless you pay a fee."
Now, where else can that business model be applied? You could let people post videos for free, and when they get enough traffic, ads are added. That might be a successful business.
The important part of this alleged business model is that the domain goes on sale, which basically forces a serious user to pay whatever the sale price is. Bait-and-switching on “ad free” is not exactly admirable but its tame by comparison.
YouTube has had ads ever since shortly after it launched, and it never did anything like promise it would be ad-free. There's no bait and switch, nor is it anything like Freenom.
If YouTube acted like Freenom, it would wait until your video got popular, then remove it unless you paid YouTube a bunch of money. Which it doesn't do.
So how on earth are you trying to connect Freenom to YouTube...?!
And a completely different one from what you quoted.
1) On Youtube, you can opt out of ads for your own videos.
2) If you get enough traffic to where you can add the ads, you don't lose access/ownership of the video on your account. Youtube doesn't force you to pay to keep your own videos, either.
I've seen people not read the article when they post a comment, but it seems you didn't even read the part of the article you quoted before making your snarky allusion.
I don't think the video ad example is particularly unethical, assuming it's disclosed to the video uploader. Or at least it's no more unethical than ad tech is by definition (which is pretty unethical, admittedly).
This domain registration scam is more like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running and https://fortune.com/2016/04/20/amazon-copies-merchants/, i.e. inferring from the inside information you have as the market maker/platform that the value of something is going up, and using that knowledge to make trades or business decisions that are profitable to you, not something a platform is normally expected to do, and costly to the source of the information, i.e. your customers. These are considered unethical/illegal because the possibility they might happen is not disclosed to the user of the platform.
I don't mean to complain, but where are the details? I have two (very low traffic, so likely to never have come close to hitting this) domains at FreeNom because they're the easiest way to register emoji/punycode domains in obscure gTLDs.
How does FreeNom know how much traffic your domain is getting, especially if you've set up your own DNS servers (which you can do on free domains)?
There are no particulars here and I am very curious to know how this popped up.
I think it's got to do with this clause in the terms and conditions [0]. An all-caps post on a weird domain isn't exactly convincing me of this supposed scam, but there is a catch hidden in the T&C.
Their DNS servers will collect all top-level DNS requests. When someone visits a given website, the TLD is queried for the authoritive nameservers for the domain if that information hasn't been cached yet. In practice, every ISP will end up sending a DNS request every once in a while when the cache expires. When loads of DNS requests come in from all over the world, you could flag a domain as high-traffic or high-value.
[0]:
---
11.2. Renewal
As long as you have remained in compliance with each of the terms of this Agreement from the date you agreed to be
bound by this Agreement, including without limitation the minimum use requirements set forth in Section 10.1, we
may elect in our sole discretion to (i) allow you to upgrade to the Paid Service at the prevailing applicable rate, (ii)
automatically renew this Agreement for a term, determined by Freenom, from such date (the "Renewal Period") and
(iii) continue providing you with FREE DOMAIN subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement (including a
renewal of the registration of the domain name provided to you in connection with FREE DOMAIN).
I too have registered emoji domains with Freenom and my experience has been good.
In fact most of my domains I have upgraded to paid registrations.
I’d love to see these allegedly high traffic domains that were just taken and sold to 3rd parties. My guess is if there is any truth to the complain the free registration expired and the domain was scooped up.
"Tampering with FREE DOMAIN and Freenom Traffic-Check.
You understand that a viewer is engaged in Freenom server infrastructure to record the number of visitors to your Freenom domain name (Freenom Traffic-Check). By accepting this Agreement, you hereby agree that you will not tamper with, disable or limit the functionality of the Freenom Service or the Freenom Traffic-Check in any way, including, but not limited to, disabling or otherwise tampering with the viewer displayed when your domain name is accessed by you or a third party."
Freenom free domains only grant you usage rights. The registrant listed in WHOIS is still their company. You don't own the domain.
I have a few Freenom domains, but they are only for short-term use (e.g. try out a new ACME client). Nobody should use a Freenom domain on a serious website.
Note that according to browsers every subdomain of such a service is in the same origin, they can read each other’s cookies and run Javascript in each other’s sites.
I run an email forwarding service for custom domain (https://hanami.run) and I have to ban the usage of those “free” domains. they are a frequent amount of spam. those users also never paid. none of them.
So i ended up just prevent signed up with those tlds or add those tlds into our system
I had a similar service with the same issue in the past. When I banned tk I did not really see less spam, after a few weeks i just saw more legit domains doing shit.
This makes sense, It'd be pretty easy for them to sign up for a domain, and then use the trial credits for sending spam/telemarketing from your SMTP servers. Though how do you deal with people using subdomains? Do you block the whole domain? How does that work for eTLDs like co.uk
I use freenom for a small website I run, they're definitely weird. That said, I've never paid them anything. Freenom combined with 000webhost was the perfect tech stack to host a small website for a friends gaming guild. Weird stuff happens, but I've not paid a dime and I don't think anyone got malware. I keep regular backups of everything and if it goes down I can just rehost elsewhere and let my friends know.
This was my exact stack for every little project under friends for years. But 000 burned me way to much, mostly because they disallow bon English content or did at least
Ah, this again. Freedom is fine, it's just that people don't read the terms and conditions before clicking "I agree".
I have a .tk domain that I bought in 2008, never had a problem, and I've been using that for all sort of things (including running a mail server).
The thing is, you're supposed to read the terms and conditions before using something, AS FOR EVERYTHING.
When I registered (and later bought) the domain the terms and conditions clearly stated that you do not get legal ownership of the domain with the free offering (which is more akin to a lease than to a registration).
I ran into this in the 1990s. I had to basically arm-wrestle one of these organizations to get a domain released. I think they gave it to me, because I made such a pain out of myself, that it wasn't worth it.
I, too, once had a domain from them. The site got zero popularity (had only a static "hello world"), then suddenly got removed with no response from support. Suspected it was some glitch and since it was free then thought nobody is actually looking at it. Never dug further.
Interestingly enough the domain is online again with apparently legitimate (no spam or adds) content.
I think they delete your domain without warning or notification if it stops serving (e.g. server goes down for a while without you noticing). That or their renewal reminders were not working correctly at some point. "Lost" one of my domains that way (was able to re-register it once I noticed).
They're an option for fun projects that you don't expect to last a year and don't care about, definitely not for anything serious.
So if the DB behind your CMS crashes and you don't notice it quickly, bye-bye domain. I believe a variant of this is what happened to one of my domains (just a joke/toy project, and was able to re-register it once I noticed).
> you ... agree that if we determine in our sole discretion that
you have violated any of the terms of this Agreement ... we shall have the right, which may be exercised in our sole discretion, to terminate this Agreement ... in such event you will forfeit to us all of your right,
title and interest in and to the domain name ... we may hold, cancel,
sell, transfer or otherwise assign or dispose of such domain name at our sole discretion.
I have been suspecting that freenom is a scam for some time. I used several free domain names for some testing that I did and although one of them did have a website up for it (which is required according to their terms of service), The domain was reclaimed after one year and I would have had to pay money to renew it.
Honestly though I have to admit that I wasn't surprised and I didn't go posting on the internet about it. I already knew that it is impossible to get something for nothing these days. Especially domain names! These days if I want to throw away domain name I'll go to name cheap and spend $0.88 on one.
I have some experience with Freenom. In fact after seeing a Show HN for Mailoji (single character emoji emails) I found the TLD .gq and registered a number of county flag single emoji domains.
In my experience it is not a total scam at all, rather they offer a freemium business model which is unique in the domain space.
Like many other freemium services the free tier is limited and just a means of getting you to upgrade. For example the free domain registration is limited to a maximum term of 12 months, they do not allow you to transfer ownership of the free domain registrations and they even froze my account after registering maybe a few dozen single character emoji domains in rapid succession.
I was actually so please with registering single character country flag emoji domains I paid the fee to upgrade and unlocked all the features.
I don’t think I can use emojis on the HN comment but for reference I registered (all .gq extensions): Cuba Flag, Israel Flag, Palestinian Flag, Ireland flag, South African Flag, Nigerian Flag and a few other middle eastern county flags.
As a side note the Mailoji service used the official Kazakhstan (.kz) registrar and I was interested and registered two single character country flag emoji domains with them (including Russia Flag) and they took that domain from me and gave it to a Developer in Kazakhstan that is clearly connected with employees that work for the registrar.
> Like many other freemium services the free tier is limited and just a means of getting you to upgrade.
The part that makes it a scam is that the trigger to start extracting money from you happens once you have something to lose by not doing so. Think about cloud storage providers with a 2GB free tier. Now imagine if instead of just forbidding uploads that would put you over your limit, that once you hit your limit, they held all of your existing files hostage until you paid them $100. Wouldn't you then consider them a scam?
So I actually purchased .tk domain when it was still dot.tk. Unfortunately it switched to freenom. Since then it's horrible experience, is there any possibility to move the domain?
Since I paid it I technically own them like a normal domain, but I just don't want to deal with them and their broken UI.
I believe this is known. But no harm in making it re-known.
Trying to register a throwaway domain on Freenom a few months ago (trying over several days) it was impossible. Quite literally impossible, not from UI, it just didn't let me log in.
[+] [-] riffic|4 years ago|reply
B) The top-level domains offered here are absolute garbage and are generally seen as problematic. See A.
C) Freenom has a lot of power as the holder of its namespace. Don't like that? Bring it up with ICANN.
Because the Internet is built around a lot of abstractions that only make sense in light of the historical context at the time the technology was originally adopted, it really doesn't lend itself to being friendly to newbies. These people are actively preyed upon by a hostile industry full of shady operators.
[+] [-] ebcase|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jampekka|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mm983|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grouphugs|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] joecool1029|4 years ago|reply
Determined to get this domain back, I tried all email contact methods and this failed. Never once received a response to an email asking for help. However, I did search around and discovered a phone number.
This began months of me calling this number and speaking to the same Dutch woman asking about unsuspending this domain so I could purchase it. Every once in awhile I called her back during Dutch business hours (so late night for me) and had a conversation with her about it. Finally after around 4 months of persistence I got the domain back and was able to register it.
[+] [-] Animats|4 years ago|reply
Now, where else can that business model be applied? You could let people post videos for free, and when they get enough traffic, ads are added. That might be a successful business.
[+] [-] jchw|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crazygringo|4 years ago|reply
YouTube has had ads ever since shortly after it launched, and it never did anything like promise it would be ad-free. There's no bait and switch, nor is it anything like Freenom.
If YouTube acted like Freenom, it would wait until your video got popular, then remove it unless you paid YouTube a bunch of money. Which it doesn't do.
So how on earth are you trying to connect Freenom to YouTube...?!
[+] [-] techrat|4 years ago|reply
1) On Youtube, you can opt out of ads for your own videos.
2) If you get enough traffic to where you can add the ads, you don't lose access/ownership of the video on your account. Youtube doesn't force you to pay to keep your own videos, either.
I've seen people not read the article when they post a comment, but it seems you didn't even read the part of the article you quoted before making your snarky allusion.
[+] [-] roblabla|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] williamsmj|4 years ago|reply
This domain registration scam is more like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running and https://fortune.com/2016/04/20/amazon-copies-merchants/, i.e. inferring from the inside information you have as the market maker/platform that the value of something is going up, and using that knowledge to make trades or business decisions that are profitable to you, not something a platform is normally expected to do, and costly to the source of the information, i.e. your customers. These are considered unethical/illegal because the possibility they might happen is not disclosed to the user of the platform.
[+] [-] vmception|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] techsupporter|4 years ago|reply
How does FreeNom know how much traffic your domain is getting, especially if you've set up your own DNS servers (which you can do on free domains)?
There are no particulars here and I am very curious to know how this popped up.
[+] [-] jeroenhd|4 years ago|reply
Their DNS servers will collect all top-level DNS requests. When someone visits a given website, the TLD is queried for the authoritive nameservers for the domain if that information hasn't been cached yet. In practice, every ISP will end up sending a DNS request every once in a while when the cache expires. When loads of DNS requests come in from all over the world, you could flag a domain as high-traffic or high-value.
[0]: ---
11.2. Renewal
As long as you have remained in compliance with each of the terms of this Agreement from the date you agreed to be bound by this Agreement, including without limitation the minimum use requirements set forth in Section 10.1, we may elect in our sole discretion to (i) allow you to upgrade to the Paid Service at the prevailing applicable rate, (ii) automatically renew this Agreement for a term, determined by Freenom, from such date (the "Renewal Period") and (iii) continue providing you with FREE DOMAIN subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement (including a renewal of the registration of the domain name provided to you in connection with FREE DOMAIN).
---
[+] [-] ev1|4 years ago|reply
To reach your DNS you have to go through the TLD. On free domains, the TTL is set to 300 seconds (or 60 seconds).
So to reach your ns1.example.com, it goes through {a,b,c,d}.ns.tk first and refers to ns1.example.com.
[+] [-] throwawaycities|4 years ago|reply
In fact most of my domains I have upgraded to paid registrations.
I’d love to see these allegedly high traffic domains that were just taken and sold to 3rd parties. My guess is if there is any truth to the complain the free registration expired and the domain was scooped up.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] layoutIfNeeded|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yoursunny|4 years ago|reply
I have a few Freenom domains, but they are only for short-term use (e.g. try out a new ACME client). Nobody should use a Freenom domain on a serious website.
[+] [-] Klasiaster|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tinus_hn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kureikain|4 years ago|reply
So i ended up just prevent signed up with those tlds or add those tlds into our system
[+] [-] herbst|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Anunayj|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BearsAreCool|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] herbst|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] znpy|4 years ago|reply
I have a .tk domain that I bought in 2008, never had a problem, and I've been using that for all sort of things (including running a mail server).
The thing is, you're supposed to read the terms and conditions before using something, AS FOR EVERYTHING.
When I registered (and later bought) the domain the terms and conditions clearly stated that you do not get legal ownership of the domain with the free offering (which is more akin to a lease than to a registration).
[+] [-] matkoniecz|4 years ago|reply
Doing it for everything is impossible. Reading it for critical things is fine and needed, but for everything I would need to hire several lawyers.
[+] [-] san9128|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|4 years ago|reply
I ran into this in the 1990s. I had to basically arm-wrestle one of these organizations to get a domain released. I think they gave it to me, because I made such a pain out of myself, that it wasn't worth it.
[+] [-] runnr_az|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kreetx|4 years ago|reply
Interestingly enough the domain is online again with apparently legitimate (no spam or adds) content.
[+] [-] tgsovlerkhgsel|4 years ago|reply
They're an option for fun projects that you don't expect to last a year and don't care about, definitely not for anything serious.
[+] [-] murple|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] layoutIfNeeded|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] indigodaddy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tgsovlerkhgsel|4 years ago|reply
The content policy bans domains that show errors (last bullet point): http://www.freenom.com/en/dottk_contentpolicy_version21.pdf
So if the DB behind your CMS crashes and you don't notice it quickly, bye-bye domain. I believe a variant of this is what happened to one of my domains (just a joke/toy project, and was able to re-register it once I noticed).
The TOS itself http://www.freenom.com/en/doc_tcfree_freenom_v0110.pdf basically says they can do whatever they want (removed some of the redundant legalese):
> you ... agree that if we determine in our sole discretion that you have violated any of the terms of this Agreement ... we shall have the right, which may be exercised in our sole discretion, to terminate this Agreement ... in such event you will forfeit to us all of your right, title and interest in and to the domain name ... we may hold, cancel, sell, transfer or otherwise assign or dispose of such domain name at our sole discretion.
[+] [-] wizzwizz4|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kenniskrag|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geocrasher|4 years ago|reply
Honestly though I have to admit that I wasn't surprised and I didn't go posting on the internet about it. I already knew that it is impossible to get something for nothing these days. Especially domain names! These days if I want to throw away domain name I'll go to name cheap and spend $0.88 on one.
[+] [-] electricant|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshxyz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sodality2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawaycities|4 years ago|reply
In my experience it is not a total scam at all, rather they offer a freemium business model which is unique in the domain space.
Like many other freemium services the free tier is limited and just a means of getting you to upgrade. For example the free domain registration is limited to a maximum term of 12 months, they do not allow you to transfer ownership of the free domain registrations and they even froze my account after registering maybe a few dozen single character emoji domains in rapid succession.
I was actually so please with registering single character country flag emoji domains I paid the fee to upgrade and unlocked all the features.
I don’t think I can use emojis on the HN comment but for reference I registered (all .gq extensions): Cuba Flag, Israel Flag, Palestinian Flag, Ireland flag, South African Flag, Nigerian Flag and a few other middle eastern county flags.
As a side note the Mailoji service used the official Kazakhstan (.kz) registrar and I was interested and registered two single character country flag emoji domains with them (including Russia Flag) and they took that domain from me and gave it to a Developer in Kazakhstan that is clearly connected with employees that work for the registrar.
[+] [-] josephcsible|4 years ago|reply
The part that makes it a scam is that the trigger to start extracting money from you happens once you have something to lose by not doing so. Think about cloud storage providers with a 2GB free tier. Now imagine if instead of just forbidding uploads that would put you over your limit, that once you hit your limit, they held all of your existing files hostage until you paid them $100. Wouldn't you then consider them a scam?
[+] [-] takeda|4 years ago|reply
Since I paid it I technically own them like a normal domain, but I just don't want to deal with them and their broken UI.
[+] [-] sascha_sl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zhte415|4 years ago|reply
Trying to register a throwaway domain on Freenom a few months ago (trying over several days) it was impossible. Quite literally impossible, not from UI, it just didn't let me log in.