
Termination of StartCom business - pferde
https://www.startcomca.com/index/News/newDetail?date=20171116
======
pferde
Apparently, they also sent out an e-mail with the same text to their
customers, with an addendum that they are going to try to get a certificate
for each customer with other CAs, and that to opt-out, one has to send them an
e-mail.

I found that addendum quite strange. Such thing should be opt-in, in my
opinion.

~~~
ahoka
Maybe you get a shiny new Turk Trust cert in exchange. Who knows.

~~~
stryk
I have no idea if 'Turk Trust' is even a real CA or if you made up the name in
jest. I'm honestly scared to Google it and find out, in slight fear of finding
out that _is_ an actual CA. (Not to get too political here, but given Turkey's
current government, I'm not sure how anyone in their right mind would 1- trust
them to say or do _anything_, and 2- trust SSL encryption certs coming out of
there)

~~~
Shoothe
At least it's not Honest Achmed's Used Cars and Certificates ;)

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647959](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647959)

~~~
Macha
Interestingly:

> Eddy Nigg (StartCom)

> Comment 11 • 7 years ago

> According to
> [http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/certs/policy/](http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/certs/policy/)
> and
> [https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA:Information_checklist](https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA:Information_checklist)
> apparently fails to comply to the audit requirements amongst other things at
> the moment. Should a valid audit statement be published and confirmed by an
> authorized auditor, I guess Mozilla could consider a discussion to include
> this CA.

------
stevekemp
As predicted in the past, this is the end result of lots of shady behaviour
from WoSign/StartCom.

Some previous discussion is here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12582534](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12582534)

------
linkmotif
I had an interesting experience with these guys. About 3 years ago I
registered the domain "getmoneymakemoney.com" and got a free StartSLL cert
from them. Three days later they revoked it because they said the domain
sounded like a scam site. I called them and tried arguing to no avail. I said
it was just an adaptation of line from a rap song and hosted my personal blog
(which it did!) but they didn't care. Go figure. Never understood why they
cared so much about my site but then accrued all the negative publicity they
did.

~~~
wolf550e
Note that these are not the same people. StartCom was sold to WoSign, and it
is WoSign who terminated StartCom business after ruining the StartCom name.
StartCom actually tried to be good net citizens.

~~~
Operyl
Well, besides charging ludicrous amounts of money for certificate revocations
in light of major internet events..

------
gatmne
Good riddance. Shady tactics and holding web security hostage has no place in
this industry. I'm amazed they lasted as long as they did.

------
kyriakos
Even though it ended badly they were the first to offer free certificates.

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rspeer
It's funny that this message appears next to a cheery pitch offering you a
StartCom EV certificate for "Only US$199.90".

Yes, I know that changing website templates requires effort, and that's effort
that they no longer have any reason to spend.

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Walkman
Finally! They did shady practices for a long time despite multiple warnings.

------
Raed667
I have sent them an email to opt out and received the following response :

"Hi,

Sure, we will record your user ID and your details won't be transferred to
other CA, as the alternative CA option is for those who need it.

Startcom certification Authority"

------
shawkinaw
OK, so is there another place I can get free S/MIME certificates?

~~~
sigjuice
I’m hoping Let’s Encrypt will do S/MIME someday. Most email clients support
S/MIME.

------
jwilk
This was discussed ~2 weeks ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15721234](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15721234)

------
NetOpWibby
I got this email and thought it was spam. I think I sent it to ReScam.

