If you’ve ever been to GoDaddy you’ll see them advertise Free Privacy with the purchase of a domain. I like the thought of keeping anonymous on some of my domains free of charge. I’m smart enough to know that nothing in life is free and there’s always a catch, usually resulting in charges later if I choose to continue. When it comes to Godaddy they get you back, not in the charges, but the my annoyingly difficult privacy management layout on the net. When you choose this option your domain becomes the property of Domains by Proxy but since you’ve paid them a fee, they relinquish all rights to the domain to you. This is how ICANN lets you get away with not putting any info. A fair trade to insure that nobody bothers you or even knows you own the domain. Herein lies the problem. If you’ve ever tried to push a domain with Privacy it won’t push because as long as it’s Private it stays locked. So just take the lock off.
I wish it were that simple. Godaddy lets go of the reigns and refers you to Domains by Proxy when it comes to management of privacy. It looks like it’s going to be an easy process, there is a nice little icon there on Godaddy in your domain management form. You would think if you press this you can toggle it off and on. Nope. It sends you to Domains by Proxy to fill out your username and password. Except I don’t have one. Maybe it’s the same as my Godaddy? Nope. Surely they made me sign up in advance and I’ve forgotten. Let me check my password log. Nope. I guess I should just signup and then I can control my domains. No where to signup.
Finally I found a customer number retrieval page that will lead me in the right direction. You simply put in the domain and they send you the info. I’ll let you know what happens. It’s only been 2 hours so evidently I have to wait few days for them to send it in the mail. Then……I’ll be ready to control my privacy.
HEy, just found your post through google, how did you get on retreiving your login details? The whole thing really is a pain in the arse 🙁
The same happened to me and by the looks of it I will lose my domains. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not use godaddy for anything. They might be cheap at first but when it’s time to make changes you will lose days of work and many nights of sleep.
I have complied with every one of their demands and they will not release the domains!
The only option I have left is to cancel in a few days which means losing my domain names 🙁
I hate godaddy and am glad that there are so many web pages out there which confirm my experience.
the whole 3rd party privacy thing is b.s….whats to stop domainbyproxy from poaching your site or holding your domain hostage?
For a big company like godaddy to be doing this is ridiculous..
op, what was the outcome of your situation?
I am in the exact same situation. I’ve been trying to transfer a domain I purchased through google apps (don’t ever do this) for the past six months… and it is literally impossible. Godaddy shows privacy as active and directs me to domainsbyproxy. Once I jumped through all the absurd hoops in order to login to domainsbyproxy, I tried to disable privacy, but all this seemed to do was remove my domain name from my domainsbyproxy account, and now godaddy still lists privacy as active. So domainsbyproxy is holding my domain name hostage – and godaddy and google are completely unhelpful. Unbelievable… Google really needs to change their domain/hosting setup, as this process clearly does not work — too many parties involved and no accountability.