GoDaddy fears government’s fake website crackdown could make the internet less safe
The world’s biggest internet domain seller, GoDaddy, has warned that India’s crackdown on fake websites impersonating famous brands will make the internet less safe for
The world’s biggest internet domain seller, GoDaddy, has warned that India’s crackdown on fake websites impersonating famous brands will make the internet less safe for legitimate businesses and carry global ramifications. Soaring smartphone and internet use has coincided with a worsening problem of online fraud in India. It’s a key challenge for government, which last year received 2.4 million complaints of alleged cyber fraud. Starting in 2019, lawsuits were brought by dozens of Indian and global firms - Amazon against fake shopping sites trading on its name and McDonald’s complaining against bogus sites offering franchises. In December, an Indian court blocked more than 1,100 such websites. A Delhi HC judge however went further, ordering sweeping new measures that tech experts say have rewritten rules of internet governance: Domain sellers should not offer buyers free privacy protection by default, the buyer’s details should be released to anyone with a “legitimate interest” within 72 hours, and website addresses that are variations of protected brand names must be prohibited. U.S.-based GoDaddy has challenged the directives before a larger Bench of judges at the Delhi High Court, according to a Reuters review of non-public filings. It says the ruling will affect legitimate businesses that have names similar to big brands. Stopping privacy-by-default features, GoDaddy said, will result in public disclosure of name, address, telephone and email of legitimate website owners, exposing them to “foreseeable privacy and security risks” such as stalking and harassment.
As domain names operate globally, not locally, the order could force GoDaddy to regulate website addresses across the world, it said. On the court’s order imposing a 72-hour deadline on companies to provide registration details to anyone with “legitimate interest”, GoDaddy argues it has no wherewithal to assess who has legitimate interest or not. The “commercially destabilising” directives may force domain name companies to “exit India”, said one of GoDaddy’s appeal documents that ran into 5,121 pages. The government and GoDaddy did not respond to e-mails from Reuters requesting comment. Court’s intervention on fake websites With annual revenues of $5 billion, GoDaddy manages 80 million domains and serves over 20 million users. In 2024, company executives said India was its biggest region in the emerging market space. GoDaddy rivals, Arizona-based Namecheap and Netherlands-based Hosting Concepts, have also challenged the Delhi HC ruling, court records show, although Reuters could not ascertain details of their appeals. The companies did not respond to Reuters queries. The legal dispute embroiling GoDaddy and others was triggered by more than 20 companies that sought the court’s intervention on fake websites damaging their brand. These included Amazon, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Xiaomi and Colgate-Palmolive. None of the companies responded to queries from Reuters. The December ruling noted the fake websites were “engines for large scale deception”. One of the 14 measures outlined by the court said masking a domain buyer’s registration details should now be offered as a payable service as the feature acts “as a cloak” to hide the identity of rogue operators.
The BriefWire