Cert Slamming, or, Desperate Companies Behaving Badly

the special sauce writes "A few months back, our customers (we run a regional ISP) started receiving deceptive domain renewal notices from Verisign and Verisign partners such as Interland. A couple of our customers temporarily lost their domains in the process as the registrant, contact information and hosting company was all changed. Yesterday, I received an e-mail from a customer. He was forwarding a "reminder" e-mail he had received. It was an SSL certificate "renewal" notice from a UK company, Comodo. It instructed him to "upgrade" his current certificate (issued by Equifax) before it expired." More information on this charming practice follows...

the special sauce Continues: "For those who don't know, Equifax was just bought out by GeoTrust, who offers a QuickSSL product. Comodo's e-mail was advertising an "InstantSSL" product, which I myself mistook for the GeoTrust product on first reading the e-mail. When I realized my mistake, I contacted Comodo and inquired as to their relationships with Equifax and GeoTrust and how they came by my customer's information. The response: "We have no relationship with Equifax or GeoTrust. The information on a certificate is public information which we have used to inform this company that they have an option when they come to buy their certificate."

My interpretation: Comodo is harvesting contact information from certificates in bad faith, to market a competing product. Furthermore, I think they have targeted Equifax customers because the company was just bought out. In any buyout, confusion exists as to the "new" company's identity. I think they are offering a product whose name is confusing similar to a GeoTrust's product. The language in their e-mail does everything possible to obfuscate the fact that they are not affiliated with Equifax, encouraging customers to "renew" and "upgrade" their certificates. In reality, if my customer had clicked the links in the e-mail, he would have been purchasing a new certificate from a company with which he had no previous relationship.

So I ask, is this not cert slamming? I don't expect this to be as big a problem as Verisign's domain slamming: we simply host less certificates than domains so it is easier to warn all of our customers with secured web sites. Nevertheless, I've reported the practice to the FTC."

Certs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Certs suck. Altoids are much better!

So, wait...

[Mike Schiraldi]

What exactly does this story have to do with VeriSign?

If we're going to start working slams against companies we don't like into unrelated stories, we should at least cover all the bases by saying something tangential about Microsoft or an RIAA member while we're at it.

Riiiight..

[iONiUM]

Verisign partners such as Interland

Is it just me or are these internet companies' names getting more cheesy everyday?
Soon we'll have CutCo, EdgeCom, and the ever waiting CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet joining the leagues of crap companies im sure.

That "renewal notices" link...

[errxn]

They went to all the trouble to blur out the customer's address and items on the invoice, and then missed his info in smaller print, just plain as day.

I wonder how this guy feels about that:
Scott Rogers
Cape Cod Computer Wholesalers
P.O. Box 2842
Orleans, MA 02653-6842

Dumbasses.

Identity Verification

[pjrc]

It's kind of ironic that the whole point of a SSL cert is to establish your site's true identity to the browser (where most users are not even aware of the certificate, the one true way that can tell who is going to receive their confidential information).

And here we have a certificate authority (CA) who's masquerading as a competitor, in order to slam "subscribers" and certify their identity to end users.