GoDaddy customer claims registrar transferred 27-year-old domain without any security checks
A GoDaddy customer claims the registrar transferred a 27-year-old domain to another user without any authentication or security checks, resulting in four days of downtime for the affected organization. The incident reportedly occurred despite the domain having ownership protection and two-factor authentication enabled, with internal logs suggesting the transfer was initiated by a GoDaddy 'internal user.' The customer faced significant delays and unhelpful support responses during a five-day effort to resolve the issue.
- ▪The domain belonged to an American non-profit operating 20 locations and vanished from the client's GoDaddy account without notice.
- ▪According to audit logs, the transfer was initiated and completed within four minutes by an 'internal user' without requiring any authentication or documentation.
- ▪The client experienced four days of downtime, made 32 phone calls, and engaged in 17 email chains, only to have GoDaddy close the case without resolution.
- ▪GoDaddy claimed the transfer was valid due to submitted documentation, but both the original owner and the recipient confirmed no documents were provided.
- ▪The domain was eventually recovered, but only after extensive effort and what the affected party described as a 'huge stroke of luck.'
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| Original publisher | The Register |
| Canonical URL | https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2026/04/29/godaddy_megagaffe_wrongly_transferred_27yearold/ |
| Publication time | 2026-04-29T10:00:09.00Z |
| Retrieval time | 2026-04-29T10:06:15.560Z |
| Last seen | 2026-04-29T10:06:15.560Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | L4Y2mE8n-6Wv |
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| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
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Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
(function() { let windowUrl = window.location.href; windowUrl = windowUrl.substring(windowUrl.indexOf('?') + 1); let messageElement = document.querySelector('.shareableMessage'); if (windowUrl && windowUrl.includes('code') && windowUrl.includes('expires')) { messageElement.style.display = 'block'; } })(); Networks GoDaddy customer claims registrar transferred 27-year-old domain without any security checks 32 phone calls, 17 email chains, a 5-day ordeal, and no help during the daddy of all stuffups, claim those affected Connor Jones Connor Jones Published wed 29 Apr 2026 // 11:00 UTC GoDaddy is currently investigating claims that it handed complete control of a valid 27-year-old domain to another customer, without requiring them to pass any authentication processes or upload any supporting…
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