back to article Facebook, distributor of deceptive political ads, sues registrar Namecheap over deceptive domain names

Facebook, still reluctant to ban deceptive political ads, has filed a lawsuit against domain registrar Namecheap and its identity-protecting proxy service WhoisGuard, for allowing people to register seemingly dodgy web addresses. In a memo published Thursday, Christen Dubois, director and associate general counsel of IP …

  1. FreemonSandlewould

    Only in England the source of the Skripal fantasy would this title fly

    So who gets to decide what is "deceptive" ?

    I would say that anyone saying your broken down health care system in England is good is being extremely deceptive but you English keep bleating about it.

    Appears you are a government toady who says what he is instructed to say.

    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: Only in England the source of the Skripal fantasy would this title fly

      Wow. You hear about these sorts of comments on the internet. It's incredible to see one with your own eyes.

      We've struck gold

      C.

      1. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

        Re: Only in England the source of the Skripal fantasy would this title fly

        Thank you for ending the week with what I consider a Comment Of The Week.

        Well done, and yes, I had to reread that too as I initially thought I still had too much blood in my coffee stream..

      2. SundogUK Silver badge

        Re: Only in England the source of the Skripal fantasy would this title fly

        Every political advert in the entire history of the known universe has been deceptive, so he has a point.

      3. stiine Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: Only in England the source of the Skripal fantasy would this title fly

        That was pitiful. Surely you can inject more sarcasm into your reply.

        Other than that, keep up the good work.

      4. Kane
        Thumb Up

        Re: Only in England the source of the Skripal fantasy would this title fly

        "Wow. You hear about these sorts of comments on the internet. It's incredible to see one with your own eyes.

        We've struck gold"

        Oh, I don't know, a quick perusal of the comment history provides some great reading material.

      5. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        Re: Only in England the source of the Skripal fantasy would this title fly

        We've struck gold

        And found iron pyrites.

    2. IGotOut Silver badge

      Re: Only in England the source of the Skripal fantasy would this title fly

      Of course we can't have facts get in the way

      UK RANKING:18

      USA RANKING: 37

      And now your beloved leaded has broken it even more, expect it to drop.

      Still who needs insulin jabs for diabetes eh?

      Source:

      http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/best-healthcare-in-the-world/

      1. SundogUK Silver badge

        Re: Only in England the source of the Skripal fantasy would this title fly

        So, a couple of NGO's dedicated to state-funded healthcare find that state-funded healthcare is best. What a fucking surprise.

    3. RuffianXion

      Re: Only in England the source of the Skripal fantasy would this title fly

      It's 'British' and 'Britain' and it's not but thanks for playing though, your contribution is important ( but probably not in the way you thought it would be). Please keep trying though, your attempts to denigrate our society are amusing important to us.

    4. carl0s

      Re: Only in England the source of the Skripal fantasy would this title fly

      It's actually bloody marvelous. I feel very well looked after.

      As for namecheap, I started using them over a year ago as 123-reg got more expensive and forced renewals and didn't allow you to remove PayPal details (you can cancel the authorisation from PayPal's side though) - basically too many surprise renewals that were a fair whack of money, plus the whole .UK debacle. Other companies that I used got bought up by same group (vidahost, tsohost, paragon group) and so have gone down in my estimations.

      I thought that post-GDPR, WHOIS was anonymised now anyway? I haven't looked into that though. Namecheap give the whoisguard for free and I got very fed up of shitty web SEO companies and app builders promising to build me a site / app for every domain I registered for myself or a customer. Constant emails and phone calls.

      Namecheap's portal/cart/control panel is rather well done too. I like it. It could be a bit snappier but it's a well built platform, so for now I quite like them.

      I permanently deleted my Facebook account about 6 months ago mind you. Took my data archive and left.

      In summary I'm on Namecheap's side.

      1. BrownishMonstr

        Re: Only in England the source of the Skripal fantasy would this title fly

        I'm interested in registering a domain, is Namecheap the best?

        Are there any others that can also provide email and web hosting?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Only in England the source of the Skripal fantasy would this title fly

          I've been using Namcheap for well over a decade for my own and a couple of other people's empires; and I'm very happy with them. Their customer support (via live chat) has been consistently excellent throughout that time.

          Name cheap also do hosting; but I usually recommend that you keep your domains and hosting separately (you're far more likely to have problems with hosting; and with domains separate you just pick a new host and point the domains...if you have to extract your domains from your host it all becomes more complicated and takes longer). I'm breaking my own rule this year because Namecheap had a particularly good deal on hosting at the time I was looking to renew; but I may or may not move at some point. It's a measure of my confidence in the company that I even considered it; let alone actually doing it.

    5. David 132 Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Only in England the source of the Skripal fantasy would this title fly

      Da! Well done Comrade! Good troll! You have earned your roubles this week!

    6. Kane
      WTF?

      Re: Only in England the source of the Skripal fantasy would this title fly

      "So who gets to decide what is "deceptive" ?

      I would say that anyone saying your broken down health care system in England is good is being extremely deceptive but you English keep bleating about it.

      Appears you are a government toady who says what he is instructed to say."

      Um.

      Wut?

    7. sabroni Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: Appears you are a government toady who says what he is instructed to say.

      I know you are, what am I?

  2. John Savard

    Obvious

    It's clear to me that at least two of the three examples you gave are useful for typosquatting attacks by hackers, to get people to install malware when they think they're logging into Facebook or installing WhatsApp, so it seems to me that Facebook is not trying to stifle sites that criticize it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Obvious

      I disagree. If a domain name should contain information about the nature of a business or the prime purpose then facebook would be the first to be sued. It would probably have to be renamed stalkerAndRaperAndPillagerOfYourPrivacy.com

      1. RuffianXion

        Re: Obvious

        A domain name is not required to contain information about the nature or prime purpose of the business. Where did you get that nonsense from?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Obvious

          So if that assertion were true, the argument f4c3b00k-10g1n.com being deceptive and fooling people into thinking that it helped them login to facebook is just blown right out of the water.

          Sorry about the spelling there, I had to find the keyboard that still had the E L A and S keys.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    NameCheap

    From my own experience, namecheap shows up the majority of times when running a WHOIS search on a malicious site or server.

    It's (almost) as bad as GoDaddy or OVH.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: NameCheap

      They're a big domain registrar and they don't insist on frisking you before you buy domains. This does enable scamming, yes, but it also allows privacy-conscious people like me to have domains without my details being world-readable.

  4. ukgnome

    More pussy, less arse!

    Can anyone remember when social media was just that - social.

    All the social media sites have now become billboards.

    It would be great to just see pictures of Amy's cat (not a euphemism)

    And it would be brilliant to not have dumb donkey videos fake or otherwise.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Facebook contacted Namecheap's WhoisGuard

    And isn't it ironic, don't you think?

    p.s. I can't wait to see google whining in public that they can't get through to MS about some minor mega-fuckup they need resolved asap, but all they're getting from MS are those bot replies to fill in a form...

  6. GBE

    What's the difference between "good" and "bad" faith deception?

    Facebook should be able to force Namecheap to cooperate if it can present evidence in court that the offending domain names represent bad faith attempts to profit through name confusion.

    So what's the difference between good and bad faith attempts to profit through name confusion?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What's the difference between "good" and "bad" faith deception?

      A good faith example would be a domain bought to parody and or criticise facebook. You could register, for example, "farcebook.com" and go on for quite some time about privacy violations. You could profit, even, by putting ads on the site and if enough people read it you make some wedge. All perfectly legal...there are laws in place in fact to safeguard exactly this sort of thing. Nobody would be particularly surprised if Facebook attempted to stifle a site like that with exactly the enthusiasm they would use on actual fraudsters.

  7. Robert Grant

    I checked, but theregistrar.co.uk is already taken. HTTP-only and coming soon!

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