Is this fair?

**ExovianAnthony** · 10-29-2005, 12:29 AM

Has anyone else had a problem with Enom's abuse department? I have. I ran a free Hosting company, and someone was using the subdomain of my domain for a phishing scam on there. Enom put my domain on registrar lock, and made it unavailable for me to use. But before this happened, I just noticed my site timed out, and wouldn't load. I contacted my server company, and they said it was a problem with my domain. I registered the domain through NameCheap, so I contacted NameCheap. After I contacted NameCheap they told me it was a problem with the server. Then I told my server company that, and they said No, its a DNS issue with the domain registrar. I told NameCheap/Enom this again, and they were like Oh, I didn't notice that Enom suspended your domain. Contact abuse@enom.com

So I did this, and didn't get a response for around 22 hours. When I did, all they said was "we suspended the whole domain because there was a phishing scam at subdomain.mydomain.com"

I replied saying "Thanks. Before I got this e-mail, I terminated his account because I noticed his username was ebay or something. He's all terminated, and I have a backup of his account incase the government needs it or something."

They replied about 24 hours later, but still hadn't unlocked the domain.

The next day the unlocked it, but I had no warning what so ever, and it took 3 days. I lost quite a bit of money, Thanks Enom!

**taheria** · 11-07-2005, 11:25 AM

Yes, that sounds fair - if you are not on top of your cusomers, and some one else has to monitor them for you, then you got what was comming.

Just my opinion of course.

**Bender** · 11-07-2005, 11:31 AM

phishing scams need to be stopped.
They did what was necessary to temporary stop it - of course they should have emailed you before locking the domain.

**JuniperPark** · 11-07-2005, 11:43 AM

Yep, eNom did the right thing. I doubt you'll get any sympathy here for NOT stopping the phishing scam.

Your post here: I replied saying "Thanks. Before I got this e-mail, I terminated his account because I noticed his username was ebay or something. He's all terminated, and I have a backup of his account incase the government needs it or something."

What are all of your statements end with "or something"? I've found that when people end their sentences with "or something", they tend to be untrue. That's just my experience, of course.

The other problem here is the title of this thread. You're obviously more concerned with your domain than the fast that you were a party to a phishing scam. The title should have been:

"SCORE 1 for eNom for stopping a phishing scam"!

**taheria** · 11-07-2005, 11:50 AM

Originally Posted by IT Web Team

phishing scams need to be stopped.
They did what was necessary to temporary stop it - of course they should have emailed you before locking the domain.

In theory that would be a nice practice - but seeing as how they have a policy of not contacting customers of resellers, how could they do that with out violating their own policy ?

In my opinion (as always) if the reseller or Hosting provider is not doing their job adaquately then they deserve what they get. Also, getting a response within 24 hours is perfectly acceptable and dont understand why this is a bad thing.

if you lost $$$ having the site down for three days, imagine how many people could have lost their actual worked for $$$ (*) in the time the phishing site was up and running. As a free hosting provider I refuse to believe that this is the first time you have ran into either a phisher, scammer, or spammer - since they flock to free sites since they are free.

* since you run a free hosting site I assume your "lost revenue" comes from advertising in which you do nothing for - if not then I appologize for the assumption

**ForumDomains** · 11-07-2005, 01:53 PM

Originally Posted by ExovianAnthony

.... I contacted my server company, and they said it was a problem with my domain. I registered the domain through NameCheap, so I contacted NameCheap. After I contacted NameCheap they told me it was a problem with the server. Then I told my server company that, and they said No, its a DNS issue with the domain registrar...

Yeah, that is why one should use one company for both web Hosting and domain registration services. Give them no option to point at each other.

**ExovianAnthony** · 11-12-2005, 09:19 PM

Guys I understand that phishing scams have to be stopped. I have no problem with that, but I also work for a company called Exovian. Now whenever there is a problem at Exovian our datacenter contacts us and let's us know when we have something that is illegal that needs to be removed and they give us 48 hours before they pull the plug on the whole server. We also respond and cooperate, but I thought it was weird Enom shutoff the domain without giving us anytime to even do anything about it, and no one would have notified me, I had to contact them. I just thought that was a bit unfair, and thought that it was weird. I guess not, and I am sorry for making the assumption that they would have e-mailed me to let me know that there was something "phishy" going on.

**stu** · 12-29-2005, 04:31 PM

It's probably in their TOS somewhere. So quite fair, imho.

**Axioma** · 12-29-2005, 04:44 PM

It's not the nicest thing to happen to you, but it's fair, IMO. However, whomever reported the phishing could have tried to contact the owner of the domain first (I do that, in this order: owner of domain->Hosting company->datacenter->registrar), but not everyone's a webmaster/domainer/etc as to feel such empathy for the domain owner, specially if something illegal is going on. Stopping first, ask later should be the priority, although a warnig/notice wouldn't hurt enom or any registrar, for that matter.