Eric Wolfram's List of Known Deceptions: Verisign

Verisign Practices Deception -- 11/07/02 -- 11:30pm

http://Verisign.com

The charges
For deceptive navigation, for practicing mendacity, for hypocritically having the tag line "The Value of Trust", and most of all, for gross overcharging for lousy services, this former monopoly -- Verisign -- is on my list.

The Proof
I hate to beat a dead horse -- ie networksolutions aka verisign aka netsol aka gonetsol -- but their web interface for managing a domain name is HUGELY deceptive. Verisign walks the fine line between deceptive corporate subterfuge and outright fraud. It's times like this when I wish I was a lawyer.

And I'm not alone, many other people have reported on Verisign Fraud and Deceptions and much of what they claim makes my beef with them seam like small potatos.

My Beef With Verisign
Basically, on their web site for managing a domain name, there is a button called "manage my dns". Clicking on that takes you to a page with a bright yellow button that says "Yes, Switch my DNS" and a button that says "no thanks". Believe it or not, you have to click on "no thanks" to change your DNS, because clicking on "Yes, Switch my DNS" actually automatically switches your domain to Verisign DNS servers and charges your credit card for the service!

After clicking "no thanks" you get to a warning page that tries to stop you from changing your DNS, plus form to actually do so. If you believe the Verisign warnings against changing your DNS, you would think that the world, as you know it, would collapse if you make a mistake. Finally, you must confirm the change -- TWICE -- which is deceptive because it seams like you're finished after the first time you confirm the change, which is as far as I got the first time I tried. I was surprised when my change didn't propagate, so I went back. That's when I figured out that you had to confirm twice.

What You Can Do
Change domain name registrar. Stop being their customer. Although verisign makes sure that's not easy, here's a step-by-step instructions to transfer domain names.

Also, please link to this page so that others can avoid wasting their time with Verisign. By linking to this page, you will increase the likelihood this information will be found in a Google Search. It's easy to link to this page, just copy the text below onto your home web page:

<a href="http://wolfram.org/scam/Verisign.html">Verisign Story of Deception and Fraud</a>

How Verisign can get off my list
Verisign can get off this list by giving back all the time that people wasted when using their purposefully deceptive user interface traps. They must apologize to all domain managers for the embarrassment they may have caused with their tricks. And they must lower their prices to be in the same stratosphere of other providers. I don't expect they can do that -- or have the gumption -- so this page will probably be here at least as long as URLs are supported on the Internet, which I expect to be for a very long time.


List of Other Deceptive Practices