[HN Gopher] Tell HN: Freenom (the operator of .tk, .ml, .ga, .cf...
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Tell HN: Freenom (the operator of .tk, .ml, .ga, .cf, .gq TLDs) is
falling apart
1. whois.freenom.com is currently down. 2. Their nameservers are
unreliable:
https://www.reddit.com/r/freenom/comments/vl71se/freenom_ser... 3.
Their client area often doesn't work. I can't login right now, and
it seems I'm not the only one having issues:
https://www.reddit.com/r/freenom/comments/zwh7o8/an_unexpect... 4.
Their email address (info@freenom.com) bounces because it forwards
to their CEO's gmail and their SMTP server doesn't have a PTR
record set: This is the mail system at host
smtp06.freenom.net. I'm sorry to have to inform
you that your message could not be delivered to one or more
recipients. It's attached below. For further
assistance, please send mail to postmaster. If you
do so, please include this problem report. You can delete
your own text from the attached returned message.
The mail system <[redacted]@gmail.com> (expanded from
<info@freenom.com>): host gmail-smtp-
in.l.google.com[142.250.141.26] said: 550-5.7.25 [216.75.58.148]
The IP address sending this message does not have a 550-5.7.25 PTR
record setup, or the corresponding forward DNS entry
does not 550-5.7.25 point to the sending IP. As a
policy, Gmail does not accept messages 550-5.7.25 from
IPs with missing PTR records. Please visit 550-5.7.25
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#ip-practices for more
550 5.7.25 information.
Author : peppermint_gum
Score : 153 points
Date : 2022-12-31 08:00 UTC (15 hours ago)
| YesThatTom2 wrote:
| They recently screwed up a transfer if a .to domain I own. They
| charged an extra $700 and then messed up the process.
|
| The domain was useless for 24 hours. Luckily it was only used for
| non-revenue services.
|
| I asked for a post Morten and to refund the $700 and after
| waiting weeks gave up on both.
|
| I figured it was just a fluke.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| File a chargeback for the money.
| sp332 wrote:
| That's a good way to just get your account suspended.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| Does it matter at that point? Surely anyone would migrate
| to a new domain name after that.
| causi wrote:
| What site? In my experience almost every .to website is worth
| bookmarking. Blocking javascript on as well, but worth
| bookmarking.
| DoItToMe81 wrote:
| Freenom has been circling the drain since 2017. Every time I hear
| of them, it just gets worse.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| I remember when dot TK domains were free... I think they came
| with the caveat that ads got added to every website you hosted
| with one... that didn't last long though.
|
| I had a four character TK domain back then.
| aequitas wrote:
| I remember them standing at a hacker event where you would get
| a free "tosti" (ham and cheese sandwich) with every (also free)
| registered .tk domain. They had a booth to register domains on
| the spot.
|
| Edit: actually it was the other way around. A free .tk domain
| with a free tosti
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/macfriendly/3834697501/in/pool...
| ragebol wrote:
| Would this event be in the Netherlands? A tosti is Dutch for
| what's called a croque monsieur basically anywhere else.
| ls15 wrote:
| Killed by SSL?
| sxg wrote:
| downloadmoreram.tk was a classic around 2004
| psnehanshu wrote:
| .ml could have been a good contender for .ai
| harrego wrote:
| There was a time where Freenom was my go to for getting unique
| domains for parody webpages but it has since become too
| unreliable even for this purpose.
| teetertater wrote:
| I'm not surprised, their client area has been getting worse for
| years. It's been nearly impossible to change DNS records through
| their web portal.
| nylonstrung wrote:
| I believe they have been out of compliance with ICANN and it
| might result in their TLDs being handed to another registrar
| foepys wrote:
| It seems like that there have been problems for quite a while.
| There is a sticky thread in the linked subreddit titled
| "Workarounds for errors when registering new domains with
| freenom", created _2 years ago_.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/freenom/comments/hixljd/workarounds...
| sacrosanct wrote:
| Any way to acquire these ccTLDs (.tk .gq etc) domains without
| going through the quagmire that is Freenom? There has to be some
| service that bypasses this kind of gate-keeping. Surprised
| there's no dedicated NIC for these. http://nic.gq/ doesn't even
| resolve.
| sshine wrote:
| > Surprised there's no dedicated NIC for these. http://nic.gq/
| doesn't even resolve.
|
| Sounds to me Freenom _is_ the NIC, and the reason they 're not
| present on nic.gq, etc., is that they're not very professional,
| and that their lack of pressionality is correlated with them
| falling apart right now.
| peanut-walrus wrote:
| Good.
| kamil3141 wrote:
| Why? Is there something inherently bad about free domains? I'm
| aware that they were used for scams and eventually some
| websites (like facebook) just blacklisted them but other TLD
| could be too.
| midasuni wrote:
| Something bad about misusing country codes, but I guess
| that's an argument long lost.
| tialaramex wrote:
| What's wrong with using the ISO codes here?
|
| The ccTLDs belong to the sovereign entity whose code it is,
| in many cases they let some for-profit outfit exploit this
| resource and keep some fraction of the resulting income.
|
| If the sovereign entity doesn't like how it's run, that's
| on them to fix it. It's unfortunate if people somehow end
| up building something important using a name that's
| ultimately controlled by some tin pot dictatorship, but
| it's not like you don't know up front.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I thought that, by convention, all dictators were "tin
| pot". And that the republics they governed were always
| "banana".
| sp332 wrote:
| Banana republics are ones that US corporate interests
| installed after forcing out more democratic leadership.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic#Guatemala
| MallocVoidstar wrote:
| I've never used Freenom because I've repeatedly seen warnings
| (for years) that if your 'free' domain starts getting
| noticeable traffic they will suddenly decide you need to pay
| them for it and shut down DNS resolution until you do.
| punkspider wrote:
| I believe the issue is with Freenom. They offer very bad
| service and you shouldn't use their services for important
| projects because sometimes you may lose your domain even if
| you paid for it.
| voytec wrote:
| > Why? Is there something inherently bad about free domains?
|
| Not the person you've asked but I've seen many legitimate
| websites using free eu.org[1] (sub)domains but I believe I've
| never seen a legit use of tk/ml/ga/gq TLDs. I may have seen
| the cf one used for some configuration tools though.
|
| [1] https://nic.eu.org/
| rippercushions wrote:
| Tokelau, Mali, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and the Central
| African Republic are all actual countries with legitimate
| users, although admittedly they're also quite small and
| poor.
| true_religion wrote:
| I can't argue about the rest of them but Tokelau is a
| series of atolls in the pacific with a population of
| 1400. Additionally, even the official government website
| is hosted in New Zealand's TLD.
|
| https://www.tokelau.org.nz/
|
| So yes, they are actual counties but we can't use that
| information to pressure that there's must be at least one
| legitimate user (e.g. the government).
| Symbiote wrote:
| There are plenty of local sites, search _tokelau site:tk_
| for examples. ISPs, mobile networks, visitor attractions
| etc.
| mkl wrote:
| Poor, yes, but mostly not that small. Mali is huge, 5
| times bigger than the UK, and has a population of 21.5
| million. Central African Republic is half that size, with
| 5 million people. Gabon is smaller, but still bigger than
| the UK, and has 2.3 million people. Equatorial Guinea is
| actually small, but still has 1.7 million people. Tokelau
| is tiny in both size and population, and isn't even an
| independent country.
| chownie wrote:
| While the landmasses are bigger than the UK for some of
| these countries, their population totals all summed still
| don't eclipse half the UK's population. They are quite
| small.
| OJFord wrote:
| > Gabon is smaller, but still bigger than the UK, and has
| 2.3 million people.
|
| I doubt GP meant 'quite small' _land area_. In terms of
| population then, the UK is roughly 35 times the size of
| Gabon.
| rurban wrote:
| I'm using a free .tk
|
| https://cannes-ratings.tk/
| catach wrote:
| tcl.tk is my favorite usage, here.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Well, a few of my friends have used these domains because
| they were free, but it seems like they kind of use bait-
| and-switch tactics, monitoring DNS traffic and asking
| "owners" to pay a hefty fee for the domain name once
| popularity crosses a certain threshold.
|
| Webmasters also have little control on records and other
| parameters that are standard at other registrars.
| voytec wrote:
| > email (...) bounces because it forwards to their CEO's gmail
| and their SMTP server doesn't have a PTR record set
|
| Also, this results in this person's address being leaked.
| edent wrote:
| I'm relieved I'm not the only one experiencing problems!
|
| Last year, they didn't notify me that I had to renew a domain -
| once it expired, they offered to sell it to me for a ridiculous
| amount. I was able to email the CEO to get it reinstated.
|
| This year, the same happened again. But no response from anyone.
|
| I know I'm getting the service that I'm paying for...
| punkspider wrote:
| Last year, one of my paid domains (.ml) showed up as being free
| in Freenom dashboard, even though I had 3 months to go. I
| needed it, and since I know support is unresponsive, I paid for
| it for another year, because I wanted to avoid any kind of
| downtime.
|
| Support answered after a few days and they corrected the issue.
| However I didn't notice that now my renewal date was now set to
| 3 months earlier than when I first paid for the domain.
|
| Because of this, along with the fact that I didn't get a
| renewal notification email this year, and along with the fact
| that Freenom doesn't seem to have a grace period, my domain
| expired.
|
| I went in my dashboard, paid the invoice, but the domain still
| isn't mine. I tried to buy it again, but I got an error.
|
| I contacted support but couldn't wait for them, so I used
| another account to buy it (for free), and it seemed to work.
|
| After a day or two I got this email from support, warning me
| against buying the domain with a different account, because I
| run the risk of getting banned. From time to
| time, we have to limit free domain registrations and put in
| place blocks. These blocks can be imposed for a variety
| of reasons including (but not limited to): - the country
| from which registrations originate; - the domain names
| themselves; - the IP addresses from which registrations
| originate; - the device from which registrations
| originate; - the use of measures (such as proxies and
| VPNs) to hide your true location from us; - a history of
| bad registrations in the account from which registrations
| originate. You are currently blocked from
| registering any additional free domains. For reasons
| of security, we cannot go into the precise reasons for this
| block. We also cannot make any predictions on when you will be
| allowed to register new free domains. Please come
| back in a few days and try to register a domain again. If our
| systems still do not allow you to register new domains, you'll
| need to wait longer. Please do NOT register
| additional accounts or use any other accounts that you may
| already have, as this will lead to these accounts being banned,
| possibly indefinitely. Kind regards,
| Freenom Support
|
| Fortunately I don't have a website running on that domain, but
| I do have a secondary email address for non-critical accounts.
| This is dumb, I know. I got hooked because it was free, and
| then I thought it's better to pay ~$10 for a renewal, than have
| to spend a few days changing emails on many of my accounts.
|
| After that email I did just that; I went through most of my
| accounts and changed emails. I've learned my lesson and I hope
| to have some foresight in the future.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| >Their client area often doesn't work. I can't login right now
|
| Email/password? Haven't had any luck with that 2-3y I've tried
| Freenom. Google sign-in works fine.
| cenourinhapt wrote:
| I have been trying to contact them regarding the transfer of a
| .gq domain of a customer.
|
| Their platform is bugging and marking my order as automated: "We
| were unable to verify you as a human, please try again later."
|
| I sent a ticket and they replied two days later, saying that they
| "will not be able to effect this transfer". I asked the reason
| and didn't received yet another reply.
| granshaw wrote:
| Shame that Jimmy.gq isn't being used - if you get it you get it
| :)
| hexagonwin wrote:
| I have a .ga domain on Freenom, under '12 Months Free'. I had
| been renewing it and using the domain for 3 years now. After
| initial register I switched the DNS settings to CloudFlare and is
| using dash.cloudflare.com DDNS settings to manipulate CNAME
| records. Now the domain is pretty important to me and I'm willing
| to pay money, but is there any good way to migrate my domain to a
| stable, trusty domain registar like Namecheap? I'm pretty scared
| of losing this domain name..
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(page generated 2022-12-31 23:02 UTC)