Registered domain with GoDaddy. Made free-for-all short URL redirection service there - like TinyURL.com Some idiot used shortened/masked his URL with my domain name/service in spam e-mail. Recipient reported my domain as spam sender to GoDaddy. GoDaddy wants $200 to "pardon" my domain in next 24 hours. There are "medium neutrality" laws which means building owner cannot be prosecuted for offensive graffiti on building's walls drawn by strangers. Then asked GoDaddy to investigate this situation - got letters like "if you are disagree to pay we'll close your account" which look like they written by auto-responder. I have almost hundred domains registered by GoDaddy - so I totally f***d if they decide to close my account. Please advice - what to do? I think I have like 12 hours to act before these f*** ups shut down my whole account.
Try calling and talking to a real person. They aren't "prosecuting" you in a legal sense, they are just charging a "service fee" for their time- which I am sure is covered in their disclaimer. It sounds like you don't have to pay, just if you don't want to transfer your accounts. With so little time left, your only option is to pay or have your account closed (unless you can get a hold of someone on the phone). If you pay, you can always continue the dispute and try to get a refund. Are you sure you haven't sent out any emails? I find it hard to believe that a url shortening service caused this.
That site is just demo version of script I'm selling - it doesn't contain any advertisement or offer any goods for sale - so advertising it is just wasting of time. + this site is popular enough without any advertisment and already closing to processor time quota limit for shared hosting account and I even wanted to shut it down month ago to prevent hosting account suspension for overusage. So no - I never ever advertised it in any mail. It seems like GoDaddy considered e-mail confirmation letters generated by users as spam advertising (200 letters during 3 months). Even more crazyness.
Unfortunately it did. I call it "contributory spamming", or the domain name had contributed to the act of sending spam. I dealt with this sort of thing in my past registrar life. Believe it or not, we do not "generally" shut down domain names for this exact situation, but I guess it is because we can afford to ward off such complaints. OTOH, we do take action if we also hosted the domain name's website or so. It's really case to case. Sadly the OP is going to have to ask for a supervisor or so if he wishes to get this resolved without necessarily paying the fee, and that's going to take time and a lot of effort. Practically, he might be better off paying them instead just to get this resolved, then transferring it to a more "friendly" registrar. Of course, there's always the chance that new registrar might also be strict. Only time will tell how things go.
That's interesting. It sounds like, in this case, the problems was caused by confirmation emails he sent out as part of the registration process. Probably not much he can do about it as he did send out the emails.
After few more letters GoDaddy abuse team said they shut down only this certain domain if I refuse to pay - not whole account. I'd say "thanks, god-daddy, for saving $200!"... Most insane part is really domain was reported as spam advertiser for e-mail confirmation letters generated by users! Just 200 letters during 3 months (there were 200 registrations). So GoDaddy domains aren't compatible with any interactive services which requires registration: I guess every e-mail generated by site can be considered spam - registration, password remind, e-mail confirmation etc. So I've decided not to pay their fees as I didn't do anything bad and I don't want to mess with the domain/site/service anymore: too much troubles for just 2 thousands visitors and 100k redirects monthly - despite fact the service was featured everythere as it is most advanced thing around. Good lesson to never ever offer free services without being backed up by "spare" money... Thing is GoDaddy aren't evil - they just asking me to pay for their own expenses which are being transferred to them by other service providers. I mean GoDaddy's IP was placed into spam block lists due to those pity 200 registration e-mails and now GoDaddy has to pay to remove it's IP from block lists. Strange world there good guys have to pay for baddies =( So I'm closing registrations, password reminders, e-mail confirmations, "send to friend" interfaces, "report broken link/image/file", "contact webmaster", "contact seller" etc. on all my sites which backed up by GoDaddy's domains to prevent same accidents. And, of course, I'm looking for new domain registar as I have plenty domains to save from idiots...
That sucks that GoDaddy's been unresponsive to your problem. As soon as you get it worked out I'd shop around and take all your names elsewhere. I had problems with another company one time where they allowed one of my key domains to expire 6 months early (unknown to me) and I had to fight like hell to get it back. There may be some merit in contacting ICAN and complaining that GoDaddy's not being responsive to getting your problem solved...just an idea.
I wanted a Redirect site... but this is one of the reasons I thought against it... having control of content is a nazi thing of mine xD well, good luck with getting this sorted.
I have a problem similar to this.... this sucks! http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1014066