> we may also wildcard your DNS to localhost and set the TTL on your zone out to a year. You’ve been warned

No, this is simply indefensible. There's simply no way you could ever excuse this.

Suspending a customer domain is OK, this is not.

I read it as tongue in cheek (to emphasize DO NOT DROP YOUR ACTIVE DDOS ON OUR SERVERS) and not something they actually would execute. Has anyone ever seen them do anything like this?

You are much braver than me. I do not dare read a contract (or the explanation of one) as tongue in cheek.

If it's a joke, or sarcastic, why is it in a document labeled "Plain English Terms of Service?" For that matter, why follow it up with "You've been warned?"

>Has anyone ever seen them do anything like this?

No, I've never seen them do this. But at the same time, I'm not going to give them the opportunity.

a threat is only as good as your willingness to execute it. If they don't actually intend to, the threat is meaningless.

Agree - they can't roll back something like this if they get it wrong...

It sounds like they are doing society a favor.

Deciding who they do and don't want to do business with is fine. It's not their job to protect vulnerable domains. Actively sabotaging someone so they can't take their business elsewhere is not OK -- especially when their offense boils down to, "we didn't tell you that someone else was attacking us." That's not doing anyone any favors except attackers.

Bear in mind, the context here is not domains doing something awful or spamming people or mounting your own attacks. It's "somebody's attacking you, and we think that you suspected they would".

By going after DDoS victims? Care to explain further?

I think it depends on what you did. If you did something crazy like run a DDoS C&C layer off your subdomains then it would make perfect sense for them to respond like this.

As others said every service reserves the right to do things like this, they just typically phrase differently. To quote GoDaddy:

> You acknowledge and agree that GoDaddy and registry reserve the right to deny, cancel or transfer any registration or transaction, or place any domain name(s) on lock, hold or similar status, as either deems necessary, in the unlimited and sole discretion of either GoDaddy or the registry: .. snip .. (ii) to protect the integrity and stability of, and correct mistakes made by, any domain name registry or registrar,

Emphasis mine and a bit snipped out since this is already long. This says if it affects their stability they can transfer your registration as they see fit. It doesn't include any protections on when you can change the domain or what they can change it to meaning blackholing you into localhost for a year is fine.

Come on. They made this threat in a very specific context, it has nothing to do with abusive activity like running a DDoS C&C.

>As others said every service reserves the right to do things like this, they just typically phrase differently. To quote GoDaddy:

Suspending a domain is standard practice, sabotaging one by setting long EOLs is not. It is dishonest to suggest that these are similar.

>These guys are extraordinarily [...] professional.

I think part of OP's complaint is they are not coming across as professional. It is entirely reasonable to take those stances but their tact is way off and definitely portrays their company in an unprofessional manner.

They might be good at what they do, I wouldn't know personally, but they come off as edgy/abrasive/unprofessional and those two quotes alone would have me second guessing if I wanted to work with people who communicate in that manner.

The only difference between them and others is that they're plain in their language rather than obfuscating it behind lawyer speak. All providers have similar provisions hidden in their TOS, it's just buried behind layers of legalese and addendums. Personally although it might not look "professional" I wish more companies would use plain language that states what they actually mean plainly without forcing you to higher a lawyer to go through the TOS with a fine tooth comb.

There's plenty of room for technical writing between the colloquialism-riddled, informal mess that that is and legalese.

If you use that sort of rude plain language, and make a mistake, good luck.

People have such a strange idea of "professionalism". It's about your principles and what you do, not the semantics and aesthetics.

"What you do?" You mean like breaking a customer's domain name for the next year if EasyDNS thinks they brought a DoS attack "on their heels?"

I take professionalism to mean you know your craft. Like for example setting the TTL on a DNS server to a year won't cause downstream services to cache the record for a year but instead something on the order of a few hours to a few days in practice.

To quote RFC 2181: "Implementations are always free to place an upper bound on any TTL received, and treat any larger values as if they were that upper bound. The TTL specifies a maximum time to live, not a mandatory time to live."

Professionalism, at least to me, implies both competence and tact. Its nice knowing that they're capable of offering services but its also nice knowing that if/when things go wrong whether by my own mistake or not, I will be treated respectfully. What those quotes of their ToS tell me is that they're willing to belittle clients on their perceived take on events.

The short explanation is that if shit goes wrong I don't want to deal with people who figure communication among clients should be handled that way.

There's nothing professional about the general tone of that document, and especially the threat others have mentioned.

This reads like the TOS for making an account on someone's phpBB forum, not a real service that should be handling anything important.

I'm more opposed to the term "Guilty by association" than by what they actually mean and intent to do.