GoDaddy locks out derivatives of Chrome

[mrspence]

Only allows direct versions of Google Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox

See message here when using Brave, a Google Chrome (chromium) derivative: https://i.imgur.com/MV66H85.png

Triggered when trying to log in.

[miedpo]

Heya, just logged into GoDaddy from Brave without any changes here, and it worked fine for me. This might be for a couple of reasons:

1) Perhaps GoDaddy is running a change on you that they haven't rolled out to me yet.

2) Perhaps I have a somewhat long history on this computer logging in using brave and that is overriding whatever heuristics they are using for 'that connection looks suspicious'. Have you logged into your account in Brave on this computer before? If so, for how long have you done so? In addition, if you turn off some of the brave shield (look at the lion in the URL bar), does the site load? It might be detecting that and using that as the heuristic that doesn't let you in.

3) Perhaps Brave rolled out an update that broke something. Unusual, but happens occasionally. Are you running standard brave on Windows, and if you go to Windows->About Brave is it saying that your browse is fully up to date?

As a note for all the people asking why people use GoDaddy, there are two things generally:

1) Sometimes, you didn't make the decision, and it's a pain in the butt to get things swapped over especially when your bosses are used to GoDaddy.

2) Their phone support is miles better than most of the competition. While sometimes you run into techs who don't help quite as much, sometimes you run into really good ones. This ratio of helpful : not helpful is quite a bit better than the competition. In addition, all of them are pretty understandable over the phone. (By the way, if any of you are looking to compete with companies like these, having good phone support really makes you stand out over the competition - you just have to make sure your support techs manage their support time well)

These things make them more difficult to replace.

[andybak]

"Your browser is a bit unusual".

Why, yes. Thank you for noticing. That is entirely intentional.

Welcome to the web.

[abirch]

Too bad there's not a chance to respond, "I assume all responsibility for my unusual browser."

I remember having to change the user agent string in Konqueror

[rvnx]

This is because the browser fails to load some JS on the control panel because the browser blocks them. That's it.

[alias_neo]

This is an infuriatingly poor error message if the problem is disabled JavaScript. Surely they can detect that and show a proper error instead of trying to be cute with this "Your browser is a bit unusual" junk?

[bob1029]

User agent discrimination will never make sense to me. It's such a trivial thing to work around too. Are there legitimate use cases for describing yourself to the web, or could we all just hard-code the bullshit magic string chrome uses and be done with it?

Ad tech is the only reason I believe this garbage continues. Maybe we can hope and pray for some kind of regulatory relief on the horizon. Alternatively, we can start building services the way we know they need to be built, and quit our jobs when our dickhead MBA bosses order us to do inhumane things with the products.

If someone in my organization ordered me to do UA/browser filtering for our web application, I would likely quit out of protest. The primary reason no one asks for ridiculous things like this in my organization is because they are convinced that I actually will. I have made it abundantly clear to the business that certain areas of technology are no-go. Being assertive about this trash fast & early can keep it from becoming a thing in the first place. Clearly, not an option for every career & job, but developers are in such huge demand that they have a non-zero amount of control over this destiny now.

[93po]

I've never understood why browser fingerprinting is so easy. Your browser gives up so much information and it seems entirely unnecessary for it to be providing such unique values. I would have hoped Firefox would have done more to eliminate this problem. They do have a resist-fingerprinting-option but it both breaks sites and also still doesn't pass any of the online fingerprinting test sites.

[duncan-donuts]

I’d wager the primary reason they’re not doing it is they don’t have a use case for it (yet).

[dzek69]

Vivaldi stopped exposing itself via User Agent, they're just telling they're Chrome. A lot of issues are magically gone.

[agotterer]

I was using GoDaddy through Vivaldi yesterday without any issue. I guess this explains why, thanks.

[okasaki]

I've been getting that message for over a year. I don't think it's browser related. I tried pretty much every browser.

I can't log in at home, but it works fine at work.

Whatever it is, I'm never using godaddy again.

[prmoustache]

adblocker / js blocker and privacy extensions can trigger that. I get similar error for different websites or gets additionnal captcha to answer because I use ghostery.

[mkl95]

GoDaddy is a well-documented garbage fire. I used them once, then switched to Namecheap and I've never looked back.

[Siira]

Namecheap locked my free DNS account for “security” reasons, and told me to contact them to unlock it. After contacting them, they advised me to open a new account. All this on a service that doesn’t let users export their data.

Perhaps they aren’t as terrible in their non-free offerings, but I doubt it.

[timbit42]

I was using NameCheap but found Porkbun is less expensive and has an easier website.

[oriettaxx]

> is a well-documented garbage fire

as I asked above, can you elaborate this? I am not aware at all

[jakub_g]

To be pedantic, "locks out derivates of Chrome" is a bit of a stretched interpretation.

What most likely happens is that there is some fingerprinting JS running trying to weed out bots; and as Brave has a lot of anti-fingerprinting measures built-in, some of the tests fail.

[superkuh]

This has been my life for a decade now. As more and more sites become exclusively applications you run in a browser (instead of websites written in HTML you look at) I've been blocked more and more. Intention or accident, it doesn't really matter. The modern "web" is only for mega-corps and they're done pretending it's anything else.

[henearkr]

Recently in GoDaddy, I've also had the "the 2-factor authentication key failed, try to insert it again" when I wanted to change important settings like the automatic renewal or the domain lock.

The point is, I used the same 2FA key to log into my account, so I know it works.

As a result I was compelled to do the intended actions through the phone by calling their support.

Has anybody got the same problem? Are they trying to prevent people from freely modifying their settings, or is it that somehow they want to "fire me as a customer"?

[aaaaaaaaata]

If they get you on the phone, they can tag you as a mark and upsell you.

[_notathrowaway]

Speaking of registars, what does HN recommend?

I was a happy namecheap user until they decided to go all political against Russian citizens. I am unsure as to what service I should migrate to.

[teddyh]

Like I have said previously¹ about choosing a registrar: If you have regular backups, and if some downtime is not really a problem, it might be fine to use web site hosting, e-mail (and in extreme cases even DNS hosting), from some fly-by-night el cheapo provider. But your domain name registrar? Pick them carefully, don’t skimp, and make sure they have good support. Because when things go pear-shaped, you really want to be able to actually talk to someone to change your web server or e-mail DNS records (or even DNS servers) to somewhere else.

Big registrars can’t afford any support costs since they prefer to squeeze the price down as far as possible, and therefore they prefer to simply lose or outright drop any customer in case of any and all problems. Conversely, small registrars may charge more, but have better (i.e. actually existing, and sometimes even dedicated and personal) support for when things go wrong, and have a vested interest in keeping you as a customer.

A small registrar might also be so small as to know you personally, which will help monumentally against any social engineering attacks.

Full disclosure: I work at such a registrar, but you’re probably not in our target market.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30818950#30821221

[archi42]

I'm using NetCup for my DNS. They're based in Germany, operate from Nürnberg and expanded to Vienna (Austria) a while ago. DNS can be managed via Web UI (which I use) or API (but no ddclient support). I am not doing much with my domains besides mail, but afaict it worked as reliable as to be expected. I don't know their political views.

Speaking of ddclient, maybe check supported DNS services: https://github.com/ddclient/ddclient I don't think it's a good measure of quality, but if someone bothered extending ddclient for their service, it's probably not that bad. Plus if you ever find yourself wanting to use ddclient, it's nice having your provider supported. (NetCup is not supported, which is why I have to run an extra service on my Linux box instead of simply using the OpnSense).

[mcintyre1994]

I like gandi.net but have no idea of their political stance re Russian citizens

[Neil44]

Google Domains is pretty no-frills. My only worry is if they randomly decide to nuke my Google account, as they are want to do to people sometimes, what happens to my domains.

[davegauer]

Haven't had any issues with name.com since switching to them in 2018. Their interface leans form-over-function for my taste (massive waste of screen real estate), but I can always muddle through to the DNS record editing interface in less than 30 seconds, which is all that matters to me.

[gumby]

I use GKG for my personal domains. For all I know "they" are just a single person in her basement. Has worked fine for many years and isn't expensive.

[mrstumpy]

I have been using DNSimple for years with good results

[kruuuder]

I'm a happy INWX customer.

[e63f67dd-065b]

You can’t get any better than Cloudflare, they sell domains at cost and have really good DNS tools.

[mkbkn]

I use NameSilo and recommend them.

[usrn]

I like easydns.

[shireboy]

I’m a Brave user and tired of Godaddy even if they fix this. What is the best alternative registrar? I just want names, possibly mail forwarding, not hosting etc.

[sgbeal]

> I just want names, possibly mail forwarding, not hosting etc.

Another alternative is NearlyFreeSpeech.net. i'm using them simply for DNS with great results and fantastic prices. IIRC, if you _just_ use them for DNS it costs 1c per domain per day. If they are your registrar, that drops to 1c/3 days. i'm only using them for registration and DNS and it costs me about $1.20 per year. Their UI is... somewhat 1990s... but it works well and they have outstanding absolutely-zero-BS/marketing-speak docs (which was the thing which caused them to win my evaluation for a new registrar).

[timbit42]

Porkbun has DNS and free email forwarding for 20 addresses. Less expensive than NameCheap.

[sackerhews]

Namecheap or Google domains.

[ColinWright]

I'm reminded of this:

https://www.technologizer.com/2010/09/16/the-unwelcome-retur...

Also submitted here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32094029

[brokenkebab2]

This website is optimized for Netscape Navigator again

[mp3geek]

Hey @mrspence, Enabled shields.

Test the following, add into brave://adblock (custom filters):

godaddy.com##+js(set, navigator.userAgent, '')

godaddy.com##+js(set, navigator.connection, {})

(logout and re-login into godaddy)

[V-2]

Works fine on Vivaldi (which is Chromium-based), unless the error is only supposed to occur after an actual logging attempt, which I can't test without an account.

So I don't doubt there's a limitation, but it doesn't seem to disallow every derivative browser (assuming I'm not misunderstanding you somehow).

[jorgemf]

Vivaldi workarounds these kind of issues by identifying itself as chrome. When a site blocks vivaldi because it is not chrome the site is added to a list and it will identify itself as chrome in the future (I know because it happened with the web version of whatsapp).

[jefftk]

> Only allows direct versions of Google Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox

Where are you seeing that? The error message doesn't say that's the problem, and it's much more likely to be that Brave is blocking something GoDaddy uses for login.

[kypro]

This doesn't seem to be related to GoDaddy locking out derivatives of Chrome and is probably Brave / browser extensions blocking certain JS scripts. I can access my account fine with Brave.

[tannhaeuser]

Web apps were an error.

[SquareWheel]

Hacker News is a web app.

[GnarfGnarf]

I've been using GoDaddy as one of my registrars for 25+ years. Their tech. support is excellent.

However, their recent switch to MS Office 365 / Outlook for email has been a fiasco, and pushed me one step closer to dropping them.