Some customers were upgraded to a much more expensive privacy product.
A month ago, a man in Scotland reported an unwelcome charge from GoDaddy:
Very disappointed with @GoDaddy (yes, I shoud know better than using them) – I let a domain autorenew only to find the original whois protection costing £7.99 has been replaced with a “Ultimate Privacy Protection” package costing £21.98!
Cont…
— Cameron Gray (@camerongray1515) April 27, 2020
Whois privacy protection on Cameron Gray’s domain was upgraded to GoDaddy’s much more expensive “Ultimate Privacy Protection”.
Gray said that a GoDaddy support representative told him that he was upgraded because regular Whois privacy was no longer needed due to GDPR.
As it turns out, the support representative gave him incorrect information. GoDaddy says the service change was a bug that it has fixed. It is unclear how many customers were impacted.
Customers outside of the European Union also might not have to pay to have their Whois information redacted in the future. GoDaddy is working on changes to the information it provides.
Mark Thorpe says
Domain name whois privacy should be free at all registrars IMO.
John says
Couldn’t agree more. And the ones who do that already know what they’re doing.
Ron Sheridan says
I would like to know how much money that “bug” generated.
Andrew Allemann says
Well, zero in the end
Freeprivacy says
Privacy will soon be free, everybody’s getting basic whois privacy that should be turned on by default, with an option to toggle it off when needed.
ForensicPolice.com says
PooDaddy.com