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GoDaddy finds that employees were indeed bidding on auctions

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Paul Nicks posted on The GoDaddy blog,

On March 11, a GoDaddy customer contacted us with serious allegations against multiple employees. These allegations alluded to employees potentially participating in auctions, shill bidding (coordinating bids to drive prices higher), and providing insider information to clients.

We immediately started an investigation into the claims.

What we found
We started investigating the activities of three employees. We were quickly able to rule out the involvement of one employee. As we investigated and interviewed the other two employees, it became clear that only one party violated our employee Code of Conduct. After a thorough review of the circumstances, we terminated the employment of this employee.

This employee created an account not associated with his legal name, and participated in auctions and expiry auctions as a bidder, which is a conflict of interest and a direct violation of our policy. To be clear, our investigation uncovered NO evidence that this employee used any confidential customer information for personal gain, or that he conducted shill-bidding on auctions.

Full story

Maybe it's time for those bidder id's

https://www.namepros.com/threads/should-godaddy-auctions-display-bidder-handles.1070950/page-5
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
wow... Why do I have a feeling that the bidders are much more but Godaddy has chosen to douse worries of legit bidders? I would guess there are more Godaddy employees involved in this.
 
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so their reasoning for not using handles is: They prefer to have a domain stand on its own value, not be bid on because of who else is bidding on it. Some agree, some don't that is fine but this is our stance at this time.

admirable, but there's some of that in every auction, literally.

what if its a real life auction: a group of domainers in an auction house, bidding on a domain, put on some masks?

handles, monikers real names whatever, is a reasonable solution to this.

imo
 
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handles, monikers real names whatever, is a reasonable solution to this.

real names along with time stamp of his/her account creation date
 
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Caveat Emptor.
These digital platforms should follow industry standard best practices. They also should be licensed.
Here is the code of ethics.

https://www.auctioneers.org/NAA/About-NAA/Governance-And-Financials/Code-of-Ethics.aspx

1. Follow English Absolute or Reserve Auction rules, once on the Block for sale- it's sold to highest bidder or does not meet reserve if it has one. PERIOD. NO closeouts, No renewal bullshit with a "Fine" for those who want to play games or get free current market value appraisals, etc.

2. IMO: "No bidder ID's" fails the code of ethics with Auctioneers General Practices:

What about ID ing who and how API's are used?

BUSINESS PRACTICE: Members should not enter into an agreement with a Client to withhold information from the public, which would prove to be unsafe, illegal, and detrimental to the public or material to making a decision to bid.

3. Ban all outside blog click promotions. Why do paid outside links exist anyway? If they are made by outsiders of the auctions they should not get paid. Opinion blogs get paid for promoting auctions of names within the auction, yet such comments are outside of the Auctioneers control. I hardly believe there is any true oversight by the "Auctioneer", and by passing written "opinions" of value about certain names appears to be riding a fine line of appraisal ethics.

"A true picture in their advertising and representations" - is common sense and by allowing "Outsiders" to promote certain names fails that, as this is a "Pass through" ethical obligation.

ARTICLE IX
Members shall avoid misrepresentation or concealment of material facts. There is an affirmative obligation to disclose adverse factors of which they have personal knowledge.

BUSINESS PRACTICE: Members should be careful at all times to present a true picture in their advertising and representations to the public.

4. Third Party Oversight and audit:


ARTICLE XIII

Members shall participate in all investigations and disciplinary proceedings when requested.

BUSINESS PRACTICE: In order for any professional organization to earn and maintain the confidence of the constituencies it serves, it must demonstrate to them the ability to "police" its own. Members have the unique ability to observe and therefore assist in the stewardship of this trust. Members have an obligation to assist the NAA and its officers in all matters, including the investigation, censure, discipline or dismissal of members.

 
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and the matter of this shillbid by their own employees just go like that?
the damage already done, it could be millions of usd taken from customer
this kind of act should be investigated as money theft
 
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Paul answered @bmugford at Domain Investing with some stats,

Paul Nicks March 28, 2019 at 11:06 pm


Brad,

Thanks for the questions. Hopefully this information will help answer your questions.

1.) From 2014 – early 2018, the ex-employee was involved in 354 auctions.
2.) They won 54 auctions .
3.) Of the 300 completed auctions they did not win,
• 154 were just the $12 initial bid
• 74 had only two bids, with $25 dollars as the highest proxy bid, they were not the 2nd highest bidder on any of these
• Of the remaining 72 where more than two bids were placed, the ex-employee never finished 2nd in an auction. Meaning even without them, the auction most likely would have sold for the price the actualized price.

As far as bidder IDs go, we’re looking at all options right now. I hope to have more information in the coming weeks.

https://domaininvesting.com/godaddy-catches-employee-participating-in-auctions/
 
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I would love to see the list of domains.
 
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Something just doesn't sound right about this. I question whether we are getting the full story. It was mentioned by GD:

"This employee created an account not associated with his legal name"

The question is, how did the employee pay for the domains won?

The name on the payment (credit card or Pay Pal) would not match the name on the "shill" account. This would or should be an immediate red flag. Apparently, this went on for years.

I remember reading about people losing their domains due to making renewal payments with credit cards that did not match their account name. Yet somehow the employee did this for years.....
 
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Paul answered @bmugford at Domain Investing with some stats,

Paul Nicks March 28, 2019 at 11:06 pm


Brad,

Thanks for the questions. Hopefully this information will help answer your questions.

1.) From 2014 – early 2018, the ex-employee was involved in 354 auctions.
2.) They won 54 auctions .
3.) Of the 300 completed auctions they did not win,
• 154 were just the $12 initial bid
• 74 had only two bids, with $25 dollars as the highest proxy bid, they were not the 2nd highest bidder on any of these
• Of the remaining 72 where more than two bids were placed, the ex-employee never finished 2nd in an auction. Meaning even without them, the auction most likely would have sold for the price the actualized price.

As far as bidder IDs go, we’re looking at all options right now. I hope to have more information in the coming weeks.

https://domaininvesting.com/godaddy-catches-employee-participating-in-auctions/

I appreciate Paul answering.

I will say, it seems odd to me in all those auctions they would never finish as the 2nd bidder.

GoDaddy needs to make changes including bidder IDs. There have been way too many games and shenanigans over the years from people abusing the system. It is long overdue.

Brad
 
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Public bidding handles should've been implemented earlier. GoDaddy team was never interested in having public bidding handles so it looks like they were waiting for some dirty activity to happen. I'm sure they won't agree but there was and is not a single solid reason for not having public bidding handles right from the beginning. It's like not much interested in having transparency. And here is the result you got and clients got the suffering.

It's more of sad to hear it but not shocking because with not much transparency at your platform, this was sooner or later going to happen.
 
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In the past you could watch auctions without bidding and retain the history in your watchlist.
They removed the functionality, once the auction is over the history has gone.
So they did tweak the system to make it less transparent. But they don't have the time or resources to make the auctions more transparent.

I don't think it would be a big dev job to replace bidder1, bidder2, bidder3 etc with named handles.

I think they don't want more scrutiny, to have to explain what did happen then and why this and that.
As a result it is more difficult for outsiders to spot and ascertain irregularities.
We have to rely on GD to police themselves.

so their reasoning for not using handles is: They prefer to have a domain stand on its own value, not be bid on because of who else is bidding on it. Some agree, some don't that is fine but this is our stance at this time.
In a way it is funny that an auction venue would want to limit bidding wars.

On the other hand, from the POV of the big spenders this could be a disadvantage - they would face increased competition.
 
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and the matter of this shillbid by their own employees just go like that?
the damage already done, it could be millions of usd taken from customer
this kind of act should be investigated as money theft
I had always suspected this due to the increased bidding going on at Godaddy auctions. Some last minute bids are so f**king weird that you begin to wonder how did these guys know a name like that is there.

Whether anybody accept this or not,it does not negate the fact that there are some things odd about the auctions at Godaddy.
 
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Do I understand this part correctly:

This employee created an account not associated with his legal name...

So, one can rule out any women, but since I don't have a GoDaddy auction account, that phrase piques my curiosity as to what sort of identification is needed to open one, if any. I mean, if I opened an account on behalf of a corporation I'd formed, then it wouldn't be associated with my legal name either. Is there a rule against having an "account not associated with [one's] legal name"?

Or is that phrase inserted to indicate something of an explanation as to why GoDaddy didn't catch it? Because where there is a policy, one might expect some reasonable internal controls for enforcing the policy. So that phrase is intended to provide a reason why the account wasn't recognized as belonging to or controlled by an employee.
 
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Wow.....a lot of the names I've either won or loss on GD auctions have been between myself and one other person in the last five minutes. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

What if that employee or other employees were the other "bidder" in one or more of the auctions that I won or loss. If I won, do I get the domain at the price it was before their last minute bids? If I loss, do I get offered that domain first or does the domain go back to auction? What happens to all of the domain names that the employee won? I already know what the answers will be to all these questions but still......just the fact that this raises questions is the issue.

I mean, will I.D's even prevent this from happening again? May be more transparent to us, but not fool-proof.
 
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Godaddy is minimizing this shit.. isn't it obvious this employee went way way above what Gd is telling us.

Forgive me if i dont believe them. Would really appreciate the list of names bidded upon.
 
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I would love to see the list of domains.
YES!

I am sure we have all felt at one time or another we were getting run up on our bidding.

The ones that always made me a little suspicious were the times I was the only bidder, I would make my bid around the 5 minute mark and a within seconds someone would show up with about 4 minutes to go and run me up. Just the two of us.

It would go from $12 to well into the Hundreds $$$.
 
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Now I understand better why I lost on most names
 
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As a result of the HAlvarez scandal at Snapnames, there were class-action lawsuits. Is that what is going to be necessary for GD to implement bidder handles?
 
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You know that was so yesterday right?

Adam has long since moved on from Godaddy.

I do business with him on occasion and can tell you in all certainty that he is no longer involved with Godaddy.
 
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You know that was so yesterday right?

Adam has long since moved on from Godaddy.

I do business with him on occasion and can tell you in all certainty that he is no longer involved with Godaddy.
Fortunately for GoDaddy...
 
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