Glitch that upgraded privacy — GoDaddy fixes
Some clients were upgraded to a much more expensive privacy product.
A month ago, a man in Scotland noted an unwelcome charge from GoDaddy:
Very disappointed with @GoDaddy (yes, I shoud know better than using them) – I let a domain autorenew only to find the original whois protection costing £7.99 has been replaced with a “Ultimate Privacy Protection” package costing £21.98!
Cont…
— Cameron Gray (@camerongray1515) April 27, 2020
Whois privacy protection on Cameron Gray’s domain was upgraded to GoDaddy’s much more expensive “Ultimate Privacy Protection”.
Gray stated that a GoDaddy support representative told him that he was upgraded since regular Whois privacy was no longer needed due to GDPR.
As it turns out, the support representative gave him incorrect information. GoDaddy states the service change was a bug that it has fixed. It is unclear how many clients were impacted.
Clients outside of the European Union also might not have to pay to have their Whois information redacted in the future. GoDaddy is working on changes to the information it provides.
