
Namecheap disabled imgur.com for abuse - citricsquid
http://www.facebook.com/imgur/posts/10151258499312471
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tamar
I'm Namecheap's Social Media Manager and just want to be clear that the issue
here stemmed from trying to contact Imgur regarding child pornography. We made
6 separate attempts to contact Imgur before the domain was disabled. We do
admit that perhaps we should have been more aggressive in contacting Imgur ,
and this is a matter being looked into by our CEO, who added the following to
the Imgur update:

"I'm the CEO of Namecheap here. Just want to let you all know that I am
personaly looking into this. The domain was taken down by an overzealous abuse
team member who had no knowledge of who imgur was. Although we did send 6
seperate emails over the last week, it should have still been escalated. I am
reviewing our policy to see how we can avoid this type of situation further in
the future. To the folks at IMGUR, I want to sincerely apologize for this
situation and the extreme inconvenience this has caused you. If you can
connect me with someone in your company. I'd like to give you a personal call
and discuss the matter further."

We know that these incidents are unfortunate but are learning experiences for
everyone involved. We hope that those of you who are using Namecheap continue
to do so and let us work to make the experience a better one for everyone, and
we hope that those of you who have not yet used Namecheap don't let this one
incident from keeping you away from us. As you can see, we are doing whatever
we can to make it right. Hope you can (continue to) give us a chance.

~~~
rebelde
You have my phone number. Can I expect a phone call before you do something
like this to my domain? I don't think it is too much to ask.

~~~
tamar
We're revising internal policies so that this doesn't happen again.

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citricsquid
A new reply: "The site was disabled for abuse. Their abuse policy is bad and
they should feel bad. We will no longer be using their service after this.
Thanks everyone for your patience!"
[http://www.facebook.com/imgur/posts/10151258499312471?commen...](http://www.facebook.com/imgur/posts/10151258499312471?comment_id=24606473&offset=0&total_comments=56)

~~~
tamar
And here's our reply: (disclaimer: I'm the social media manager at Namecheap
and a huge fan of Imgur)

We were in contact with imgur about a matter regarding child pornography for
which we are unable to provide additional details. We sent six emails
requesting that they get in touch. Since they did not respond to us, this
resulted in us temporarily disabling the domain, though we should have made
additional measures to get in touch, and for that, we apologize, and our CEO
is also monitoring this matter closely. At Namecheap, it is critical that you
always keep your whois information current and ensure that the emails on file
are email addresses you check regularly. Again, we sincerely apologize for the
inconvenience but are happy to hear that everything is back in order.

~~~
RKearney
Have you used this before? <http://imgur.com/removalrequest>

I've used it and images were deleted within hours.

But the bigger question at hand is why does Namecheap feel like they can
change the nameservers of domains based on the content of said page? The
content on the page is in no way hosted on any of Namecheaps systems. Not even
a DNS query for imgur.com hits Namecheaps servers.

What's next, Namecheap starts taking down domain names that blog about things
they don't agree with? Where does it end?

~~~
tamar
Ryan, as you can see, Namecheap's CEO Rick Kirkendall replied to all of your
concerns on the Facebook thread itself. As Rick acknowledges, policy was not
followed and things will change.

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jdelgado
Thanks for sharing this OP - I have all of my domains with NameCheap, they
have been my favorite registrar for years, but i'm thinking it is time to
start moving away from them.

I've noticed NameCheap support has really gone down hill recently. I used to
get issues resolved rather quickly (within an hour), but now tickets take
upwards of hours just to get answered, and usually with a canned message
unrelated to the issues, resulting in further communication to resolve
relatively simple things.

I think this incident is the last nail in the coffin for me. It's also sad to
see that NameCheap's official response doesn't make sense as well... They
state that they made six separate attempts to contact Imgur, yet go on to say
they should have been more aggressive; it makes me wonder if they just emailed
them - it went to an old box and didn't bother picking up a phone. Having some
high traffic domains myself, this makes me really uneasy. Regardless of the
issues at hand, every possible attempt should be made to contact the company
before they suspend the domain, and if the alternative is unavoidable, a TTL
of minutes at most; two days it ridiculous.

It's a shame, finally thought I found a good registrar.

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citricsquid
Thought this might be of interest to people here as recently Namecheap.com is
being celebrated as the saviour from poor registrars.

The DNS was updated to:

imgur.com. 172800 IN NS blockedforabuse.pleasecontactsupport.com. imgur.com.
172800 IN NS dummysecondary.pleasecontactsupport.com.

~~~
RKearney
The 4 month TTL on the record is just the icing on the cake. I'm moving the
rest of my domains off of Namecheap after hearing this. It's extremely
troubling to hear Namecheap has no problem changing your domain's name servers
without your approval.

~~~
mcmillion
Thats's two days, but it's still ridiculous.

~~~
RKearney
You're right, I forgot another divide by 60.

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jdelgado
Anyone else find it ironic that they have this major marketing scheme to
promote internet freedom, yet suspend domains freely? lol

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33degrees
Great, I was just thinking of transferring a bunch of domains there. Any
recommendations for a better registrar?

~~~
RKearney
I transfered some of my NameCheap domains over to Gandi[1] a few months ago
and after hearing this I'm about to move the rest.

[1]<https://www.gandi.net>

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drigotti
A little surprised that this happened without a phone call first.

