22Well, the title of this post is simply not true. I did sign up an EstDomains reseller account. However, just before logging in to set up all the details, I diligently googled their name trying to find out why they are so cheap but people rarely talked about it. Then reading through pages after pages of reports, blog posts and forum discussions on how EstDomains and co. are almost an equivalent of spammers and fraudsters’ nest, I think I will have to cancel what I had signed up to.
“Where is the cheapest place to register domains” has become an often asked question when you have more than a dozen domains in your portfolio. Through some forums posts I discovered EstDomains, an ICANN accredited registrar, that has everyday low price of USD$5.99/year on .com/.net/.org domains. That is actually selling below cost, as VeriSign, wholesaler of .com and .net TLD, charges $6 per domain per year, plus 22 cents extra for ICANN fees. How does EstDomains survive being a loss leader? Well, why should I care? — at least it is how you usually think when you spotted a bargain.
Moreover, it also provides you a free domain reseller platform that lets you sell their cheap domains with your own branding. Since I am also helping some of my friends out getting their domains registered, I thought I might as well sign up a reseller account. After all it is free, so nothing to loose, right?
“But something is not right”, I thought. Why there are so many GoDaddy coupon sites on-line, but EstDomains with its cheaper-than-everyone-else price is rarely mentioned? Maybe it has a bad reputation, as we all know even an accredited registrar can poo poo on you. So I went to the almighty Google for answers, and that has really lightened up my view on this registrar.
Just search for EstDomains at Security Cadets to see what I meant. They are not just the spammers’ registrar of choice because of their price. They actively sponsored those dodgy activities! Community reviews on AboutUs.org basically say:
These guys are registrars for known hackers and spammers. They should be sent to prison.
…
I’ve just spent ten minutes removing posts from a web site I monitor — all giving links to porn — and deleting the spammer. Ten minutes out of my life wasted having to clean up garbage partly because domain registrars like this don’t care who they sign up as long as they get their money.
Is there ever going to a way to make these owners and others like them accountable?
Moreover, I have seen forum add-on scripts that automatically check whether linked sites in comments are registered by EstDomains, and bin them automatically if it is the case. At the end, registering with these guys is not just financially contributing to the spammers and fraudsters, but also runs a risk of your sites being banned by online communities.
I guess I will stick with GoDaddy and NameCheap for a while.
Hello, I’m webmaster at securitycadets.
You did the correct thing, researched before you bought. There are plenty of people who don’t do this and generally register at the said company. Maybe not even creating rogue programs and just wanting a service.
GoDaddy is pretty good, we even use it. As for Estdomains Inc or Intercage Inc, if you have several hours I can blab about them for along time.
I strongly advise to avoid them at all costs. It’s not worth it. Plus most of their IP’s are in many blacklists and 3rd party hosts files.
Andy
Andy — thanks for all the info. Your site is the first few English sites in the SERP when I searched “EstDomain” on Google (without the plural “s”), and all the rest are in Russian. It has very detailed research on all the malwares sponsored by this said registrar. Thanks for letting the world know!
I happened to stumble upon a website (loupatou.com) which was an EstDomain registrar, hosted by svservers.com in Brazil. IP adress: Washington DC. I found text and pictures that belonged to my blog (and several other websites) . Content copyright is violated by an ignorant splogger, one who just doesn’t seem to care about copyright and fair use law. Every hosting company has very strict rules for its clients about copyright infringement. This one hasn´t.
This company, “estdomains” is very suspicious. Apparently this outfit operates out of an apartment on Ninth Street in downtown Wilmington, DE. The telephone number they list on their web site is a residential listing according to reverse-directory listings. The fax number is a toll-free number apparently running into a fax to e-mail service. I became concerned when I came across a Russia-based money laundering wire-transfer scheme spamming from Careerbuilder.com listings and when I e-mailed the company about the suspected abuse, they seemed non chelant about the issue. I don’t know what’s going on here, but if these folks are in fact operating an illegal enterprise in the state of Delaware, it won’t be long before the state’s AG catches on.
I have been dealing with a site registered at ESTDOMAINS for several months now. The domain copied a legit site’s pages and spammed many monster.com people offering a job. Of course EVERYONE got the job. I suspect after doing the “work” they are being asked for banking and social security info to “pay” them for their “work”. I’ve warned people as best I could but any legit registrar would have shut down the activity. I called ESTDOMAINS and in a russian accent they said just fill in the support ticket on their site. I’ll do it but I googled them, found this site and see that it’ll be unlikely that they take the site offline. This registrar should be investigated and probably charged with aiding and abetting.
Guys do not be so pathetic. Estdomains is official approved registar by ICANN.
http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html
yups…
EstDomains is a legit company..
ESTdomains is a blatant criminal enterprise in close associated, if not full active members of the Russian Business Network. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Business_Network
Their main function is to be the front company and safe haven for domain hijacking, but they are open to any criminal venture that is within their power as a (barely) legitimate registrar.
I will add, domains that are hijacked, show up as being registered by estdomains.com, and the whois information reads like a ransom note.
Example whois line – “Registrant – If you want your name back contact me”
To which estdomains replies that everything looks legitimate to them, and no action will be taken to reverse the transfer.
I’ve been using Estdomains for almost a year and had no problems whatsoever, they are an accredited registrar and are using Logic Boxes Solutions for registrars http://www.logicboxes.com/
They suck after a year i got one complaint from a customer for being late on shipping an order and they locked my domain and ignore all my emails. stay away from them!
liar you probably work for them don’t you. If I, or the legit company that created the “real” AntiSpy Storm find you, we are going to sue you. You know who I am.
Maybe they are run by aliens and are planning to destroy the world with domain names.
I just reported a SPIM Spammers to estdomains with plenty of backup docs to support my claim that they domain is being used to spam… Here was Estdomains reply which shows that pro-spam they are. Also they have no anti-spam AUP.
Hello,
Kindly note that Estdomains
is the Domain Registrar, not the hosting company, thus, according to the
ICANN rules, we are dealing only with the domains, which are involved in
Email Spam, child pornography distribution, or display Inaccurate Whois
Information. We ask you not to send us any letters regarding the domains
registered with us, which are involved in any other type of activity. The
responsibility for such domains is on their hosting company, thus, you
should better write them. You can find this information using different
web-services, we recommend you to use http://www.whois.sc/, it gives you all
information about hosting company when you search for a domain and after
that click on IP address at the right of the page.
Regards,
Abuse Team
I don’t know, this page seems to be full of posts by either disgruntled customers or those that may have their own domain registration business. I have a estDomains account only because I bought a domain that was registered there. I later transfered it out to one of my main domain accounts, but not because of any problems. I just got an email from them and I did not realize their prices were so low. Well NO WONDER they attract spammers… DUH!
That does not mean they are spammers or spam-friendly. In the post above they clearly state that you can contact them about SPAM and a few other issues, but to expect them to take responsibility for everything that happens at the hosting level is unrealistice, since they cannot access all the hosting files and logs to verify complaints.
I’ve filed full documented spam reports with Domainsite, Godaddy, Moniker, Tucows, and Network solutions. Only Domainsite.com has every taken action against a spammer that I am aware of. I think it’s great the Estdomains at least SAYS they will respond to spam complaints.
And I really have no connection to Estdamains other than what I said. I have about 8 registrar accounts and a resellerclub.com account. Estdomains’ prices are cheaper that what I pay currently at resellerclub! And estdomains has their own reseller program that I just found and will think about. First I need to see if some of the other things mentioned here are true, like the blacklisting of domains registered via estdomains.
I think there may be some valid issues here, but I don’ t think most of them are the fault or responsibilty of estdomains. And I really wonder how much is due to estdomains low prices threatening the business of others that sell domains…?
Hi, the question is that if you filled in the support ticket and asked our
opinion on this.
You know, cheap domains attract different kind of people, some of them could
be involved in some shady activities, but it doesn’t mean that we support
that in any way. Have you ever reported anything to us? In case you did you
should have noticed that we suspend and remove everything, connected to
spam, fraud etc, in the shortest possible time. Our support team does a
great job in fighting with the cyber-criminals, so kindly note this before
making any decisions and writing any articles regarding our services.
The letter from ESTDomains you quote above is an autoreply. It doesn’t mean anyone actually looked at your request yet.
If you are persistent and keep emailing back and forth insisting they act, generally you will get someone to respond, even if it doesn’t fall in the “email spam, child pornography or inaccurate whois” categories. But they will do only exactly as much as you ask, so don’t assume they will take care of any other obvious related problems. You need to follow through yourself.
As far as ICANN accreditation, ICANN only expects action for inaccurate whois (and they are a bit fuzzy about what kind of action fulfills their agreement). Registrars that suspend for spam or child porn — without going through procedures to prove the whois info is inaccurate — are doing so based on their own terms of service or their own national laws, not ICANN’s.
In the light of recents events, you certainly did right: yesterday EstDomains has been de-accredited from ICANN:
http://www.icann.org/correspondence/burnette-to-tsastsin-28oct08-en.pdf – in English
http://rbnexploit.blogspot.com/2008/10/rbn-farewell-to-estdomains.html – in English
http://www.sicurezzainformatica.it/2008/10/estdomains-de-accreditato-da-icann.html – in Italian
Whell I’m really sorry they’re gone now, even with the bad reputation, they never did me wrong. They had $2 .org’s and I bought a couple of hundreds. No scams, just plain cheap. Were it not for estdomains, I would never of bought my new house.
Have a nice day.
I became concerned when I came across a Russia-based money laundering wire-transfer scheme spamming from Careerbuilder.com listings and when I e-mailed the company about the suspected abuse, they seemed non chelant about the issue. I don’t know what’s going on here, but if these folks are in fact operating an illegal enterprise in the state of Delaware, it won’t be long before the state’s AG catches on.thanx for
Greta move. These Russians and Serbs have absolutely no morals at all, they will do anything