Watch Out for Dotster’s Idiotic Subdomain Policy
June 1st, 2007, 19 Comments »
I finally got to the bottom of my subdomain problem. A recent commenter pointed me to my registrar’s–that’d be Dotster–registration agreement. It’s more than 11,000 words long, so you’ll forgive me if I didn’t read it carefully.
Item 6.5 (just search for ‘wild’) has this to say about subdomains:
DNS Wildcard. In the event you utilize Dotster, Inc.’s DNS management services and fail to configure a wildcard DNS for your domain, Dotster, Inc. may insert wildcard DNS records to resolve subdomains of your domain that would not otherwise resolve. Dotster, Inc. may point those subdomains to a web page that may contain advertisements and other materials selected by Dotster, Inc. in Dotster, Inc.’s sole discretion. This may include, but is not limited to, third-party website, third-party product and service offerings, and/or Internet search engines.
In other words, “Dear Customer: Unless you read this and take steps to fix it, we’re going to abuse your trust for extra revenue.” Bastards. If it weren’t such an enormous pain in the butt, I’d move this domain elsewhere immediately. You can be certain I won’t be registering any other domains with them.
If you’re a Dotster customer, you probably have no idea how to resolve this issue. Happily, this knowledge base article explains how to insert a wildcard entry into your DNS.
UPDATE: Hmm…I can’t seem to link to documents on Dotster’s site. You can find the registration agreement in the footer of any page, and the knowledge base article is, as you’d expect, in the knowledge base.