If you trust VeriSign you need your head examined

During the past 24 hours, the domain server for infopulsellc.com (our company webserver) was changed from what it should be to an Interland nameserver (Interland now services the Cobalt RaQ that is our webserver. It used to be an Interliant box, but Interliant decided to sell its customers. Which we didn't find out about until long after it was fait accompli.)

This, apparently, was accomplished by the Great Genie Notus as Interland says they didn't do it and Network Solutions, er, VeriSign, is pleading ignorance.

Supposedly, this is not supposed to happen without explicit permission from the domain owner (that's us). Well, we sure didn't give permission for this. When WE try to make a change we practically have to send in a DNA sample -- or a driver's license at the very least. Your data is supposed to be safe and protected with all the hoops one has to jump through to make a change. What a lie.

The whole thing is allegedly under investigation by both Interland and Network Solutions. We have no hope of ever getting an answer about what happened. The current theory (from Interland) is that Network Solu ... we mean VeriSign ... was doing a batch update to a bunch of Interland domains using a script, and somehow the script messed up. (I guess they never heard of error checking.) We started the process of changing the domain server back to what it's supposed to be, but it takes a couple of days for the change to go in effect. Meanwhile, our website might as well not exist.

If we actually get any answers as to why and how this happened, from either company, we'll post the details here.

At any rate, we strongly advise all who have a domain registered at Network Solutions (or VeriSign, who owns it now) to switch to another registrar immediately. We're going to finish moving all of ours to DNS Central just as soon as we can (it costs $17 but it adds a year to your registration.)

VeriSign's tagline is "The Value of Trust." So why are they so untrustworthy? This kind of crap happens, along with domain name hijacking, and companies are supposed to spend their buckaroos for a silly little ugly VeriSign shield logo? Who are they trying to kid? It's getting so that when I see the VeriSign seal, I want to run.

As far as Interland goes, I'm not sure yet what it's like doing business with them. It's not really 24/7 tech support if the DNS people don't have a body or two on the help desk after 6:00, is it? Interliant tech support was pretty good the couple of times we needed it. I keep thinking about moving to Rackspace or maybe another rack farm, but the thought of transferring up to 200 websites to another box makes my blood run cold.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/18/02 at 08:33 PM
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