GoDaddy Suspended Domains With Live Sites For No Reason Given

[sisisimoore]

GoDaddy Account number is 154255281

On Thursday, we received an email stating, "your xxxx domain is at risk of being suspended." Alarmed, I contacted GoDaddy immediately. They checked and found nothing wrong, suggesting it was a phishing scam and advised me to delete the email. Despite the email appearing to come from [email protected], they confirmed it was phishing. I contacted that address but received no reply.

Yesterday, our main website went down, and we received another email stating, "your xxxx domain has been suspended." They suspended our entire account and all associated domains, including parked ones. Hundreds of customers now cannot access their accounts or contact us. The suspended domain wasn't active but redirected to another domain within the same account, which is also down. GoDaddy won't provide a reason for the suspension.

I suspect a competitor's false accusation or Blackhat SEO tactics. I don't think it's a coincidence that after reaching the top on Google and overtaking a couple of competitors, this has happened. Has anyone else experienced this? After three hours on the phone, GoDaddy only advised emailing hostsec @godaddy.com.

These are successful businesses with hundreds of customers each week so if they stay own is ruining our livelihood.

Should I speak to a solicitor? Even if they found one issue with a domain (virus or whatever) how on earth can they suspend the entire account including domains not even live?

Any help would be enormously appreciated. Not slept all night. All of our financial income is now lost if this cannot be resolved.

 

[sisisimoore]

@GoDaddy Are you able to help with anything on this?

 

[Gm0]

GoDaddy Account number is 154255281

On Thursday, we received an email stating, "your xxxx domain is at risk of being suspended." Alarmed, I contacted GoDaddy immediately. They checked and found nothing wrong, suggesting it was a phishing scam and advised me to delete the email. Despite the email appearing to come from hostsec @godaddy.com, they confirmed it was phishing. I contacted that address but received no reply.

Yesterday, our main website went down, and we received another email stating, "your xxxx domain has been suspended." They suspended our entire account and all associated domains, including parked ones. Hundreds of customers now cannot access their accounts or contact us. The suspended domain wasn't active but redirected to another domain within the same account, which is also down. GoDaddy won't provide a reason for the suspension.

I suspect a competitor's false accusation or Blackhat SEO tactics. I don't think it's a coincidence that after reaching the top on Google and overtaking a couple of competitors, this has happened. Has anyone else experienced this? After three hours on the phone, GoDaddy only advised emailing hostsec @godaddy.com.

These are successful businesses with hundreds of customers each week so if they stay own is ruining our livelihood.

Should I speak to a solicitor? Even if they found one issue with a domain (virus or whatever) how on earth can they suspend the entire account including domains not even live?

Any help would be enormously appreciated. Not slept all night. All of our financial income is now lost if this cannot be resolved.

One of the many reasons why people (domainers) don't use godaddy as a registrar.

 

[sisisimoore]

Update as of 14/06/24

- The hostec email given to me by godaddy is yet to reply to my original message from over one week ago. They are still yet to tell us the reason for suspension or why we cannot access any of our other domains or why the customer service team provided false information when contacted.

- Godaddy customer service assured me I would hear back within 24 hours. I have heard nothing from anyone so far.

- We as a company have stated speaking to a solicitor to deal with the issues we are facing with godaddy. Lost revenue in just a week already adds up to several thousands due to godaddy lack of response to actually undertake a manual review of the situation.

- I have found out that all emails received from godaddy so far are completely automated and no human has actually looked at our case. The only reason godaddy mentioned for suspension on the phone was due to 'phishing'. This is complete nonsense as the domain itself was not even live and served no emails.

- After people contacting me from the black hat SEO world, it appears what happened to us is relatively easy to do. All people have to do is setup scripts and target here:

supportcenter.godaddy.com abusereport/phishing

And the domain will be removed automatically without any manual intervention. A classic example of 'act first, ask questions later'.

- I will keep here updated constantly to help other users with this issue (and hopefully serve as a warning to others not to use godaddy). I have also contacted the godaddy representatives on this forum. I will. Provide details on whether they reply and whether what they say is useful.

 

[Richard.]

Update as of 14/06/24

- The hostec email given to me by godaddy is yet to reply to my original message from over one week ago. They are still yet to tell us the reason for suspension or why we cannot access any of our other domains or why the customer service team provided false information when contacted.

- Godaddy customer service assured me I would hear back within 24 hours. I have heard nothing from anyone so far.

- We as a company have stated speaking to a solicitor to deal with the issues we are facing with godaddy. Lost revenue in just a week already adds up to several thousands due to godaddy lack of response to actually undertake a manual review of the situation.

- I have found out that all emails received from godaddy so far are completely automated and no human has actually looked at our case. The only reason godaddy mentioned for suspension on the phone was due to 'phishing'. This is complete nonsense as the domain itself was not even live and served no emails.

- After people contacting me from the black hat SEO world, it appears what happened to us is relatively easy to do. All people have to do is setup scripts and target here:

supportcenter.godaddy.com abusereport/phishing

And the domain will be removed automatically without any manual intervention. A classic example of 'act first, ask questions later'.

- I will keep here updated constantly to help other users with this issue (and hopefully serve as a warning to others not to use godaddy). I have also contacted the godaddy representatives on this forum. I will. Provide details on whether they reply and whether what they say is useful.

@sisisimoore I have had the same issue with my godaddy account last month and still no response to over 15 attempts to contact and escalate the issue. I had actually taken my site down within 24hours (even though there was clearly no issue with my site - i had scanned and checked with 5 different companies). But still , godaddy ignored my communications and then a few days later they sent another generated email saying their cyber investigation team have closed my account permanently and all 15 domains in my account will be taken (14 were inactive and only 1 was live). This is very suspicious seeing as i had the 1 domain live for over 2 years and all of a sudden when i reached the top of google they suspended my account.

I have looked into this and it appears they seem to get away with it too often.

Did you resolve your situation?
I am in the process of taking legal advice and would welcome any advice or even if others in the same situation would like to take class action against godaddy - please get in touch!

 

[sisisimoore]

Just an update to this.

After instructing a solicitor, I managed to get the domains back under our control.

 

[iamzahid]

Just an update to this.

After instructing a solicitor, I managed to get the domains back under our control.

What happened ? Your Domain was Victim of Hacking ?

 

[sisisimoore]

What happened ? Your Domain was Victim of Hacking ?

We're not sure. Our main guess is that one of our competitors reported our domain via different methods/ IPs etc and we got an automatic suspension. It's a shame that it took solicitor involvement to get some action though.

 

[hanguyen13293]

Just an update to this.

After instructing a solicitor, I managed to get the domains back under our control.

I’m in the same situation. Could you please share your solicitor’s contact? My Godaddy account and all my domains have been locked, and my business has been on hold for over two weeks because of this suspension. It’s been really stressful, and any help would be much appreciated.

 

[alcy]

.

 

[sisisimoore]

I've replied to both.