EasyDNS

Last updated
easyDNS Technologies Inc.
Type of business DNS, Web hosting services
Founded1998
Headquarters219 Dufferin Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada [1]
OwnerMark Jeftovic
URL easydns.com

easyDNS Technologies Inc. is a Canadian Internet service provider which supplies DNS [2] and web hosting services and operates a mail service called EasyMail. [3] [4] The company is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. [5]

Contents

Co-founder Mark Jeftovic, author of the book Managing Mission - Critical Domains and DNS, [6] maintains a blog in which he writes about news and issues related to easyDNS and about internet domains in general. [7]

History

easyDNS was co-founded in 1998 by Mark Jeftovic, Colin Viebrock and John Schmidt. [8] [9] [10] [11]

On March 2, 2000, easyDNS became an affiliate of ICANN accredited registrar OpenSRS (now Tucows). [12]

In 2003 easyDNS became directly accredited via ICANN. That year the company began accepting payment by E-gold. [13]

In April 2013, easyDNS started accepting Bitcoin as a payment method. [14] In June the company was one of several that were caught up in a day-long international Denial-of-service attack, although the attack was not aimed at an easyDNS customer. [15]

In August 2014, easyDNS acquired DNS provider ZoneEdit. [8]

In 2017, easyDNS started providing Ethereum Name Service (ENS) integration for domain names. [16]

Controversies

WikiLeaks

In 2010, due to confusion with the similarly named EveryDNS, easyDNS was widely reported to have cut off DNS service to WikiLeaks. [17] easyDNS subsequently was approached by WikiLeaks and agreed to host three domain names for WikiLeaks. [18] Some easyDNS customers who disapproved of WikiLeaks threatened to change providers. [17]

Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit

In October 2013, a request from the UK Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit requested they redirect torrentpond.com to an IP address controlled by the PIPCU.

This request was refused due to having no legal basis. [19] [20] easyDNS suggested that registrars that complied with the PIPCU's requests may have violated ICANN's transfer policies. [21] and filed a request for enforcement with ICANN. [22] Following this request, three domains suspended by Public Domain Registry were ordered to be transferred to easyDNS. [23]

Illegal pharmaceutical sales and fatality

In 2014, easyDNS was at the centre of controversy due to its policy of refusing to take down web pages for unlicensed online pharmaceutical companies accused of selling controlled substances without a prescription. easyDNS CEO Mark Jeftovic referred to the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy as a "batch of clowns" after it sent easyDNS and other registrars a letter ordering them to take down the websites unlicensed pharmacies without court orders and to prevent those domains from transferring to other registrars. Doing so would put registrars in violation of their ICANN Registrar Accreditation Agreements. [24]

easyDNS clarified its policy after a man died after taking a "controlled substance" codeine phosphate purchased without a prescription from airmailchemist.com, an online drug seller registered through easyDNS Technologies Inc. easyDNS was not aware of airmailchemist’s presence on the system, and had not been informed by ICANN of the circumstances around the man’s death until contacted by a reporter. [25] Upon learning of the death, easyDNS immediately initiated contact with the FDA and added a requirement that online pharmacies be licensed by one of three online pharmaceutical accreditation agencies. [26]

Leaked contact details

From October 25, 2018 to October 26, the domain contact details of 1,500 domain owners using easyDNS were leaked in Whois query results due to a bug in a system provided by the second largest domain registrar in the world, Tucows, which easyDNS uses as its backend to manage domain names. [27]

Related Research Articles

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the associated entities. Most prominently, it translates readily memorized domain names to the numerical IP addresses needed for locating and identifying computer services and devices with the underlying network protocols. The Domain Name System has been an essential component of the functionality of the Internet since 1985.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ICANN</span> American nonprofit organization that coordinates several Internet address databases

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is an American multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces and numerical spaces of the Internet, ensuring the network's stable and secure operation. ICANN performs the actual technical maintenance work of the Central Internet Address pools and DNS root zone registries pursuant to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) function contract. The contract regarding the IANA stewardship functions between ICANN and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the United States Department of Commerce ended on October 1, 2016, formally transitioning the functions to the global multistakeholder community.

A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the last non empty label of a fully qualified domain name. For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the top-level domain is .com. Responsibility for management of most top-level domains is delegated to specific organizations by the ICANN, an Internet multi-stakeholder community, which operates the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and is in charge of maintaining the DNS root zone.

In the Internet, a domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As of 2017, 330.6 million domain names had been registered. Domain names are used in various networking contexts and for application-specific naming and addressing purposes. In general, a domain name identifies a network domain or an Internet Protocol (IP) resource, such as a personal computer used to access the Internet, or a server computer.

A domain name registry is a database of all domain names and the associated registrant information in the top level domains of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet that enables third party entities to request administrative control of a domain name. Most registries operate on the top-level and second-level of the DNS.

The domain name moe is a top-level domain (TLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet. Its name comes from the Japanese slang word moe, indicating its intended purpose in the marketing of products or services deemed moe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Verisign</span> American Internet company

Verisign Inc. is an American company based in Reston, Virginia, United States, that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the authoritative registry for the .com, .net, and .name generic top-level domains and the .cc country-code top-level domains, and the back-end systems for the .jobs and .edu sponsored top-level domains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.coop</span> Top-level domain

.coop is a sponsored top-level domain (sTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet. It is intended for the use of cooperatives, their wholly owned subsidiaries, and other organizations that exist to promote or support cooperatives.

Tucows Inc. is an American-Canadian publicly traded Internet services and telecommunications company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and incorporated in Pennsylvania, United States. The company is composed of three independent businesses: Tucows Domains, Ting Internet, and Wavelo.

A domain name registrar is a company that manages the reservation of Internet domain names. A domain name registrar must be accredited by a generic top-level domain (gTLD) registry or a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registry. A registrar operates in accordance with the guidelines of the designated domain name registries.

Domain name scams are types of Intellectual property scams or confidence scams in which unscrupulous domain name registrars attempt to generate revenue by tricking businesses into buying, selling, listing or converting a domain name. The Office of Fair Trading in the United Kingdom has outlined two types of domain name scams which are "Domain name registration scams" and "Domain name renewal scams".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Network Solutions</span>

Network Solutions, LLC is an American-based technology company and a subsidiary of Web.com, the 4th largest .com domain name registrar with over 6.7 million registrations as of August 2018. In addition to being a domain name registrar, Network Solutions provides web services such as web hosting, website design and online marketing, including search engine optimization and pay per click management.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.ae</span> Country code top-level domain for the United Arab Emirates

.ae is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet for the United Arab Emirates. It is administered by .aeDA which is part of the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority of UAE (TDRA).

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is the organization that manages the .ca country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Canada. Its offices are located at 979 Bank Street in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. CIRA sets the policies and agendas that support Canada's Internet community and Canada's involvement in international Internet governance. It is a member-driven organization with membership open to all that hold a .ca domain. As of January 2021, there were more than 3 million active .ca domains.

The Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) is a process established by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for the resolution of disputes regarding the registration of internet domain names. The UDRP currently applies to all generic top level domains, some country code top-level domains, and to all new generic top-level domains.

Enom, Inc. is a domain name registrar and Web hosting company that also sells other products closely tied to domain names, such as SSL certificates, e-mail services, and Website building software. As of May 2016, it manages over 15 million domains.

<i>Register.com v. Verio</i> American legal case

Register.com v. Verio, 356 F.3d 393, was a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that addressed several issues relevant to Internet law, such as browse wrap licensing, trespass to servers, and enforcement of the policies of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The decision upheld the ruling of a lower court which prevented a provider of web development services from automatically harvesting publicly available registration data from a domain name registrar's servers for advertising purposes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.biz</span>

.biz is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet. It is intended for registration of domains to be used by businesses. The name is a phonetic spelling of the first syllable of business.

Domain registration is the process of acquiring a domain name from a domain name registrar.

DNSimple is a managed domain name server service operated by Aetrion LLC d/b/a DNSimple, which offers DNS hosting, domain registration, and SSL certificates. DNSimple is also an ICANN-accredited domain registrar.

References

  1. ↑ "easy DNS Technologies INC". Liberty Village BIA. Retrieved 2019-03-30.
  2. ↑ Jim Carroll; Rick Broadhead (1999). Selling Online: How to Develop a Successful E-Commerce Business in Canada. Macmillan Canada. p. 246. ISBN   978-0-7715-7643-0.
  3. ↑ "Why (and how) I'm saying goodbye to Gmail". MacWorld, Joe Kissell, October 31, 2013
  4. ↑ "Yahoo and AOL Damage Mailing Lists and Email Forwarding". TidBits, Adam Engst, 17 June 2014
  5. ↑ "Possibly related DDoS attacks cause DNS hosting outages". Computer World, Lucian Constantin, IDG News Service | June 04, 2013
  6. ↑ "Managing mission-critical domains and DNS : demystifying nameservers, DNS, and domain names". Worldcat record.
  7. ↑ "Daily Stormer binned by yet another registrar, due to business risks". The Register, Simon Sharwood 11 Sep 2017
  8. 1 2 "ZoneEdit is Under New Management". ZoneEdit. 2014-08-06. Archived from the original on 2014-08-17. Retrieved 2019-03-30.
  9. ↑ "Impending "Fake News" Bill Brings Censorship, Free Speech Concerns". easydns.com. June 11, 2018. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  10. ↑ Jeftovic, Mark (November 19, 2018). "Don't Advertise URLs That You Don't Exclusively Control". easydns.com. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  11. ↑ Jeftovic, Mark (May 26, 2014). "Growth for Growth's Sake Leads to Nowhere". easydns.com. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  12. ↑ "News Releases". easyDNS. Archived from the original on 2000-06-20. Retrieved 2019-03-30.
  13. ↑ Business Week. Bloomberg L.P. 2006. p. 71.
  14. ↑ Jeftovic, Mark (April 16, 2013). "We now accept Bitcoin as a payment method". easydns.com. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  15. ↑ "Toronto provider recovering from DDoS attack". ITWorld, Howard Solomon, June 5th, 2013
  16. ↑ Jeftovic, Mark (September 2, 2018). "Ethereum Name Service (ENS) Integration Now Live on Mainnet". easydns.com.
  17. 1 2 "Canadian firm caught up in Wiki wars". The Globe and Mail. Steve Ladurantaye, December 8, 2010
  18. ↑ "Defenders of WikiLeaks Swarmed Wrong Target". New York Times. December 10, 2010. Retrieved August 5, 2015.
  19. ↑ Whatever Happened to "Due Process" ?, EasyDNS, 2013-10-08
  20. ↑ Orlowski, Andrew (11 October 2013). "Canadian operator EasyDNS stands firm against London cops". The Register. Retrieved 21 April 2014.
  21. ↑ Jeftovic, Mark. "Registrars that complied with "shakedown" requests may now be in violation of ICANN Transfers Policy". EasyDNS. Retrieved 21 April 2014.
  22. ↑ Jeftovic, Mark. "TDRP proceedings initiated in response to UK police shakedown" . Retrieved 21 April 2014.
  23. ↑ Andy. "Registrars Can't Hold 'Pirate' Domains Hostage Without Court Order" . Retrieved 21 September 2014.
  24. ↑ "NABP To Registrars: you Must Takedown and Seize Any Domain We Tell You To".
  25. ↑ "Icann, Regulators Clash Over Illegal Online Drug Sales". Wall Street Journal. October 27, 2014. Retrieved August 5, 2015.
  26. ↑ "EasyDNS changes take-down policy after man dies". August 15, 2014. Retrieved August 5, 2015.
  27. ↑ Hill, Rebecca (2018-11-02). "Web domain owners paid EasyDNS to cloak their contact info from sight. It was blabbed via public Whois anyway". The Register. Archived from the original on 2018-11-03. Retrieved 2019-03-30.
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