Does GoDaddy Roll Over For Any Random Subpoena?

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the not-a-particularly-good-policy dept

Domain registrar and web hosting firm GoDaddy isn’t building up the greatest reputation in protecting the rights of its customers. Earlier this year, we noted that they yanked an entire website offline because it was archiving some security mailing lists that had a few messages about a recent leak of a huge list of MySpace usernames and passwords. In a similar case, about a year ago, GoDaddy took an entire site offline after a hacker used a vulnerability to set up a phishing page on that domain (which was quickly removed). The latest comes from the EFF, who notes that GoDaddy had no problem turning over the private info of a customer, based on a subpoena that later turned out not to even be valid. According to the EFF, GoDaddy gave the customer only 3 days to find a lawyer and challenge the subpoena… and wouldn’t even let him see the subpoena itself. While companies like GoDaddy often find it easier to just agree to any such subpoenas, if they keep doing things like this, customers are going to start moving elsewhere, to registrars and hosting companies they can trust to at least give them a real chance to respond. In the meantime, actions like GoDaddy’s simply encourages more bogus subpoenas to be filed, knowing that companies like GoDaddy will often roll over and cough up info, even when they don’t need to.