“Requirements of the government” lead to sudden blackout at escrow company.
[Update: DN.com is now back online. I’m also hearing rumors that DN.com might have been acquired by another large Chinese domain company.]
Last week domain name escrow service DN.com suddenly went dark. The company sent out an explanation yesterday, which is copied in its entirety below.
The company blames “requirements of the government” and “modifying the entity” as the reason for the sudden closure, which the company says should last for a few more days.
What’s the government concerned about? Capital control issues?
Whatever is behind this, it certainly hurts the trust necessary to run an escrow service.
DN.com is owned by GoldenName, the same entity that runs the domain marketplace 4.cn.
In an interesting twist, when you Google DN.com, the top results is DND.com. This page previously had information about an escrow service in China, but now gives a 403 error when you visit it.
Here’s the email from DN.com:
Dear Clients,
Last week, DN.com website was temporary closed for modifying the entity, and for the requirements of the government, the website will remain closed for several days more. Please keep informed that admin.dn.com is available to you with all functions. If you have other questions, please feel free to contact service@dn.com and we shall serve you timely.
Due to the sudden change, we have received many inquiries and concerns, thank you for all your support and love to DN.com. Once entity modification is completed, DN.com will be back on.
Spring is the time for giving birth to the newborns, DN.com is also gaining momentum for a new start. Let’s wait patiently and expect DN.com’s new return. Thanks again!
Warmly Regards,
DN.com Team
Acro says
DN.com is up. Blame the top result, DND, to their bad SEO. Will be interesting to see what DN.com does in the next few days.
Steve says
That’s why .cn is a big gamble. If the dragon doesn’t like something it eats it. They may be able to block .com but can’t shut it down like any .cn name or any other tld based behind the curtain.
.com is the safest bet when it comes to China and the rest of the World.
Carl says
The reason is not related to Gov – DN.com is about to be acquired by another company. Websites may be shut for 1-3 days when the ownership is changed. New owner need to go to MIIT and get their ICP updated. That is also the reason why DN.com said it was a “change of entity”.
Andrew Allemann says
Don’t you think this is the type of thing you let your customers know about in advance? There must be more to the story, or this was just really, really sloppy execution.
Echo says
Hi Andrew,
I am Echo from DN.com, yes, DN.com is back! We are truly sorry for the sudden change, it was an internal mistake that we didn’t have the time to notify users in advance. We could blame the certain colleague for making such a mistake, but we choose to focus on working things out instead. Sometimes things like this happen, we just need to choose to forgive and move on.
Just to be clear, DN.com is not acquired by any company. Though FreeLancer.com’s CFO reached out to us several times wanting to acquire DN.com, we said no. So DN.com still belongs to John Xu.
Yes, we all make mistakes, and we all learn from mistakes. Trust me, I am not happy with the sudden change either. But to move things forward, we need to go through tough things first. That is true in our lives as well, isn’t it?
Thank you all for your concerns, we will continue to serve the domaining community with all our efforts. Wish you all the best!
Kind Regards,
Echo