The only people who will suffer from this are the people who are currently in a difficult situation due to them fleeing from Russia. Big companies and people staying in Russia will easily absorb this, of course.

Collateral to what? They aren&#x27;t dealing any actual damage to the regime, just some random people who had the misfortune of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This is NOT collateral damage, these people are the actual target. Who do you think will suffer from this decision? Developers and it nerds mostly.

They have offices in Ukraine. I got this e-mail as well. This is collateral damage. You can get an another domain. Many people won&#x27;t get their life back. Fuck Putin, fuck the war.

This is a really, really fucked up thing to do. Many Russians are currently scrambling to move their families and businesses abroad, away from Putin&#x27;s regime (myself included). This will put additional pressure on people who are in a very difficult situation already and actively oppose the war.I sincerely hope Namecheap reconsiders.

Yep, Russian citizens seem to be between hammer and anvil. I&#x27;m personally not afraid of government seizing my domain as it&#x27;s just personal mail and I&#x27;m nobody important. But for something more controversial like opposition website that might be hard indeed.

Exactly. This is helping Putin build his own &quot;national Internet&quot; that they&#x27;ve been talking about for so long. And the more successful he is at that, the more isolated Russians will be from world news, and the more exposed to Russian propaganda (which is already hysterical).

Doesn&#x27;t the Russian government control the .ru TLD? Can&#x27;t they just seize it regardless?

I think it&#x27;s pretty ironic, considering that that&#x27;s probably the one thing domain owners in Russia wouldn&#x27;t want - the Russian government being able to seize the domain.

Yeah, this is breeding more isolationism and distrust; now I have to take nationalistic concerns into account when choosing service providers, and wonder who else might pull a Namecheap in the future.

While I&#x27;m not from Russia, I guess I have to move domains to the registrar in my country. It&#x27;s just not safe to do any business abroad, when I can&#x27;t go to the court in case of anything happens and all my property could be seized if someone wouldn&#x27;t like actions of my government.

I’m not in Russia last 15 years, could you white list me, please? My Namecheap id is playspeed. I’m anti wars, and anti corruption, anti thug supporter. I wish no conflict had had started. Thanks. Wish you, guys, safety.

Does sending money back to your parents &#x2F; grandparents in Russia count as &quot;contributing to the regime&quot;?

If you are no longer based there and are not contributing to the regime in any way via taxes&#x2F;duties we can whitelist you.

Not living in Russia (moved because of the government oppression) apparently is not sufficient to not be hit by this ban, just having any russia-related information gets you kicked out looks like. Really great move by them.

Interesting… Russian users of their Handshake tlds, too is what I am reading.Prime example of the risk associated with using a centralized entity.At the same time, a bold and clear move.

Namecheap used to be that way. They put out a blog post last year about how they support free speech.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.namecheap.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;internet-freedom-the-state-of-play&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.namecheap.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;internet-freedom-the-state-of...</a>

I don&#x27;t know if it&#x27;s still true nowadays but Gandi was started by a group of hackers &#x2F; Internet libertarians who were involved (as defenders) in the very first cases of Internet censorship in France.So hopefully they have kept that spirit and don&#x27;t do any of that bullshit.

It&#x27;s time to decentralize.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ens.domains" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ens.domains</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ipfs.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ipfs.io&#x2F;</a>

njal.la. Sign up via tor, pay with crypto. They&#x27;ll never know where you&#x27;re from, nor do they want to.

If a politically neutral registrar is one without employees in a location that has been threatened with &#x27;never-before-seen consequences&#x27; - I&#x27;m stumped.

Great, now amid looking for ways to get my family out I also have to find another registrar who will not do the same thing and transfer my domains so that my cloud and email are still working.Any politically neutral registrars that HN crowd can recommend?

Well, at least my .su domain still works...

This isn&#x27;t a business or political issue for them. See the response from the CEO in this discussion. They have employees on the ground in Ukraine who&#x27;s lives are in danger right now. Given that, I understand why they are not that concerned about the fairness of it.

Cancel culture doesn&#x27;t usually involve government war crimes. I am anti woke myself but pro genocide I am not.

This is the real consequences of cancel culture. It&#x27;s convenient until it comes up against your own personal beliefs.

This is quite unprofessional of them. Unless the jurisdiction specifically forbids it, taking sides like this and kicking out their paying customers with little notice is nothing but opportune posturing that reeks of deplatforming. Don&#x27;t take out your grievances on already subjugated population.

It&#x27;s the same registrar that threatened to turn off our 3000 Alexa rank site due to a defective copyright notice on one of the 30 million user subdomains! Our legal counsel had to write to them a threatening letter to buy time, and then we fled immediately.

I am from Switzerland. Got an email too: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;antonmedv&#x2F;status&#x2F;1498407020864675843" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;antonmedv&#x2F;status&#x2F;1498407020864675843</a>Because I&#x27;m Russian, I guess?

They are targeting users in Russia, not Russians.Ultimately, people in Russia are paying taxes towards this war, and have some responsibility for their government.

This is what the beginning of economic stagnation looks like and how regime change is forced upon Russia (again).  It could be worse, though.  You could have a nuclear power rolling tanks through your neighborhood trying to decapitate your government and install a puppet.

Isn&#x27;t it a discrimination based on nationality? We&#x27;re a small company in Russia and things are already hard for us. And now this. We do not support Putin or his war, why hit on us?

This is the site with the most horrible user experience I&#x27;ve ever seen. A site so stupid that it says we can&#x27;t verify your identity even though I sent a recovery email with the mail I registered with. There really is no logical explanation for why they could be this big with godaddy. I hope it ends soon. Please do not use this site. If you are using it, stop using it.

May be it is more for the sake of their team and not you.

Disrupting the everyday lives of Russian citizens is an effective way to incite change. Some will choose to flee the chaos, but some will choose to protest and fight the regime.Will there be good Russians unfairly hurt as collateral damage? Yes.But the Ukrainian civilians being gunned down in the streets and having their homes blown up are also being unfairly hurt. There is very little they can do to stop it, but they&#x27;ve been forced to drop everything and fight.Like it or not, you&#x27;re on one side of a war. It&#x27;s to be expected that your life will be inconvenienced - so have lives on the other side. You can flee - nothing wrong with that - or you can protest, but you can&#x27;t hope that you won&#x27;t be impacted.

Yup, it&#x27;s actually making things harder for us to move away from Russia. One more thing to deal with. And this NameCheap&#x27;s decision didn&#x27;t hurt Putin even a tiny bit.

Good luck to you. Seriously.But what does anyone expect? All this international business depends on stable, peaceful relations. Russia broke that. The party will not go on.We know you&#x27;re not personally responsible for the invasion of Ukraine. And that&#x27;s not any different than the embargoes during any prior armed conflict.

I don&#x27;t know how this is relevant. I am very much against this war, but there is very little I can do to stop it as a regular citizen. I&#x27;m currently doing everything I can to flee the country, as I don&#x27;t think my family is not safe here. I don&#x27;t understand how this is supposed to harm Putin&#x27;s regime or any of his supporters.

Absolutely. I know this is Putin&#x27;s War, but imagine asking your staff to be professional and respond to your Russian customers when they can hear Russian fighter jets overhead.On one hand we ask large companies to show more heart and humanity, and on the other hand we rail against them when they take a principled stand.How anyone can expect a company to honour any corporate agreement in such an environment boggles my mind. Let alone company that sells domains and prides itself on being &#x27;cheap&#x27;.People and principles should come first, and money second. This is exactly the world we want to live in, right? Not some capitalist dystopia.FWIW, I do not begrudge affected customers being angry, that seems very fair. I just also think this is a very reasonable course of action by Namecheap.

I wish they included that bit in their outreach based on a lot of comments in this thread. It probably would&#x27;ve helped add some additional perspective into their decision making.(This is one of those threads where we also thank dang for this service.)

They have 1700 staff in Ukraine, by far the majority of their employees, so it&#x27;s not surprising that they see things differently to others.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.namecheap.com&#x2F;careers&#x2F;ukraine&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.namecheap.com&#x2F;careers&#x2F;ukraine&#x2F;</a>

As an American I neither believe in such group punishment no any “guilty for sins of the father.”

If you look at what both Europe and Ukraine is doing right now with sanctions, they&#x27;re being a bit more clever.- You want to turn Russians against Putin, yes. But you don&#x27;t want to have those same people hate Ukraine&#x2F;US.- For example, sanctioning a hospital or stopping sales of food or medical supplies into Russia would be a stupid sanction. Forbidding oligarchs from living luxury lives in Europe is a good one.- Right now, most sanctions are focused on the wealthy and influential Russians, since those are the ones that have any sway.- My guess is that the vast majority of Namecheap customer&#x27;s are exactly the ones that will protest against Putin, or organize information campaigns aginst him.- Obviously sanctioning Kasparov or Navalny would be the dumbest move. This is sort of in that same category.

It&#x27;s a sanction. Meant to cause contention within their society to promote regime change. Think of it as tough love.

You are not reading that right: 582bn rubles, probably $7B before the recent crash.

It seems it would be completely logical to also boycott the European countries that are actively funding the Russian government with the billions of dollars that are given directly to the state, through the state owned Russian gas companies. If I&#x27;m reading this right, ~582bn~ 7bn USD (thanks Jabbles!) for just a few month last year: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;world&#x2F;2021&#x2F;dec&#x2F;13&#x2F;gazprom-hits-record-income-as-russia-prospers-from-europes-gas-crisis" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;world&#x2F;2021&#x2F;dec&#x2F;13&#x2F;gazprom-hits-r...</a>I think it makes sense that the European people should also feel the immediate pressure for actively funding the war for the foreseeable future. They&#x27;re an absolutely massive income stream, and should be part of the collateral, especially since they&#x27;ve been warned about this for decades now.I would be interested in seeing a counter argument to this.

You do realize we’ve toppled more unfavorable to us regimes than anyone in the past ~120 or so years, right? The real difference is that no one can really pull the rug out from under us, but that’s changing because we’ve offshored so much, hoping that if anything our world beating military would intervene.

As an American, this affirms Namecheap as my first choice.I would do everything in my power to isolate and fight against a country engaging in a war of conquest in the modern era. For me it would not be a choice.

Russia has attacked over 1000 of namecheap’s employees.

Simply an American, and I’ll be moving my dozen domains off of Namecheap.Attacking random Russians for something you don’t like of their leader is as dumb as post-9&#x2F;11 Sikh bashing or interning German&#x2F;Italian&#x2F;Japanese after Pearl Harbor and the war declaration.Way to make a shit situation worse.

I just received the same email.Good for them, moving to nic.ru

That seems logical however I also got the email and I&#x27;m British, with zero links to Russia, no russian tlds&#x2F;hosting, absolutely nothing, all my domains registered in England.

Namecheap sent this email to Russian customers.

I also got an email: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;antonmedv&#x2F;status&#x2F;1498407020864675843" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;antonmedv&#x2F;status&#x2F;1498407020864675843</a>

Are there any official sources for this? I did a quick google search and couldn&#x27;t find any announcements.

Internet doesn&#x27;t help. I saw screenshots of bunch of chats between relatives in Ukraine and Russia in first couple of days. People from Russia claim that Ukrainians are brainwashed, russia comes to liberate them and only neo-nazis are fighting back and shooting into cities.There is also articles on official new sites (like RIA) that neo-nazis are executing Ukranian Military personal that doesn&#x27;t want to fight.Internet doesn&#x27;t help. It&#x27;s all about bubble...As very unpleasant example, my father who lived most of his live in Kyiv but lives in Germany for past 15 years or so, is consuming only russian media. He is sure that Ukraine is ruled by neo-nazis from bunkers in Kyiv and whatever Russia is doing it&#x27;s appropriate. This was his opinion after first day. Don&#x27;t think that it changed

The internet, right? How else will they learn that President Trump (not the illegitimate so-called-president Biden) supports our great leader Putin!

Truly awful. If you listen to Russian news (propaganda) they&#x27;re claiming Ukranians want Russia to come liberate them and save them from poor living conditions. It&#x27;s almost as if they forgot that people have the internet.

I&#x27;d be open to making exceptions in cases that are anti-regime.

I don&#x27;t want to start flame war, and I really feel bad for your situation for for situation of many other people who opposed Putin regime who got majorly f(&amp;d today (my head was spinning last few days as I saw russian economy falling through the bottom while city where I born is shelled), but... actions (or not actions) of Russian population over past 20 years created today&#x27;s situation (don&#x27;t tell me that you don&#x27;t know the common opinion in russia that Ukrainians not really nation and do not deserve their own state). You are unfortunately collateral damage of your own actions, not of those of EU. EU and rest of the world trying to do damage control.I really do sorry for your situation, I really hope that namecheap will work out with you. I do hope that EU and other countries will extend humanitarian visas to people that try to escape russia now before iron curtain will fall down. Yet, at this moment, it is what it is.

The only way to make change is to inconvenience people.

This is what sanctions are. Blocking bank accounts also hurts the people trying to flee, but it&#x27;s one of the standard sanctions. It seems that everyone is hoping that making the Russian people&#x27;s lives more difficult will make them stop supporting Putin and he will end the attack because of that. Why a dictator would care at all whether citizens support him or not is unlear to me, so I can&#x27;t imagine any of this is going to be particularly effective.

I don&#x27;t understand how &quot;collateral damage&quot; is relevant. Aren&#x27;t people supposed to minimize collateral damage? Namecheap didn&#x27;t HAVE to do this. The chose to do this in a very particular way, which hurt its customers, especially those opposing Putin&#x27;s regime and currently fleeing the country.

Unfortunately this is a double edged sword.Many times the West was very hesitant on acting against russia&#x27;s shenanigans (most notably Georgia and Crimea), because &quot;it will hurt the common person and not those who are making decisions&quot;.Now russia is in de facto conventional war with Ukraine and in information&#x2F;business war with __all__ of the West. putin is out of ideas and freaking blasting cities with bombs like it&#x27;s London 1940. The West is still not enganging russia in conventional war, due to nukes, but if it&#x27;s war why one side needs to cry, run, starve and die, when other nation can sit by their propaganda tv and eat the kool-aid.In this new information age it&#x27;s the only possible resistance against the regime - Iron Curtain 2.0. The West cannot win informational war inside russia. Those who know english and know how to use internet are mostly young Moscovites, everyone else is sucked into propaganda, there&#x27;s not enough critical mass. Propaganda is at the same level that Germans did not know or believe that there are concentration camps next door.Either topple the regime, leave [0] or be living under Iron Curtain 2.0 stand in lines for bread with your money that are worthless.I believe the West tried for the longest time not to play into this &quot;russophobia&quot; card. The sanctions definitely work together with russian propaganda (&quot;look wht those evil gay nazi imperialist west are doing for simple russian people&quot;). And for the longest time big players like DE, UK, FR did not understand putin, compared to how post-soviet countries like the Baltics and Poland warned. DE for the longest time that you can work with putin like any other liberal democratic leader. Now all this is in the trash and everyone is united against putin.I am repeating myself - but I guess it&#x27;s the only way to work against putin. Conventional war with other superpowers will most likely mean nukes, i.e. end of the human world.[0] I bet many young people from Moscow or Peter will attempt to do this.

Putin has really been playing up the West’s “Russophobia” leading up to the invasion and I worry that social media has caused some of these “sanctions” to get out of hand really quickly with everyone piling on to the point some of the actions are, indeed, Russophobic. Cutting off service for Russian people who aren’t even living in Russia seems like it crosses that line to me.

They been finding cassetes. Most likely uragan. grad is more straight-forward. Also in another bombardment were found scattered around those lovely things <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;PFM-1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;PFM-1</a> .
It&#x27;s also been shot by uragan

These do look like submunitions, though: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;_____Tweety____&#x2F;status&#x2F;1498384301829894144" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;_____Tweety____&#x2F;status&#x2F;14983843018298941...</a>At least I don&#x27;t see any rockets in any of the frames. And the explosions don&#x27;t seem that big.

Not that it makes a whole lot of difference, but those explosions don&#x27;t appear to cluster munitions.Probably some kind of fragmentation rocket fired from a grad[0].[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;BM-21_Grad" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;BM-21_Grad</a>

Given that Russian vodka is blacklisted from stores in USA (and Finland!) and replaced with message &quot;we stand with Ukraine&quot;, it&#x27;s not really surprising.I read interview with somebody from Russia yesterday, russian tracks getting their tires punctured in EU and get stuck because credit cards don&#x27;t work anymore. Ships refuse to offload goods in Russian ports and drop them of &quot;wherever in Europe&quot;. Russian companies can&#x27;t buy&#x2F;rent containers to bring goods to Russia.It&#x27;s a lot of collateral damage.On the other side my brothers in law family in Kharkiv sleeps in hallway for past few days while outside blow up cluster munition delivered by MLRS systems <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;YWNReporter&#x2F;status&#x2F;1498271572292952064?s=20&amp;t=KXLkE4_FXvpdFTG-f6HvVA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;YWNReporter&#x2F;status&#x2F;1498271572292952064?s...</a>Edit: just to add, I myself was born in Kyiv. Company where I work now has officies both in Ukraine (in one of hotter places) and in russia. I am equally trying to help my colleagues from both offices to GTFO. Collateral damage is unfortunate for private person but frankly not surprising. What is &quot;surprising&quot; it&#x27;s that a big chunk of Russian population is surprised by it

Sure but I don&#x27;t want our company to be a factor in that contribution. I&#x27;m sure there are plenty of others out there willing to take the money and provide these services. If there are anti-government non profits out there, We&#x27;ll consider keeping those up with us if you&#x27;d still want anything to do with us.If you are no longer based in Russia and not doing business there, we&#x27;ll consider that as well.

You&#x27;re just the average russian right now. Complaining when the war pulls them out from their comfortable orwellian reality. No social network, e-payments, entertainment and start to cry.Where were you last Wednesday for instance, hours before the &quot;pacification&quot; took place? Not complaining perhaps, not doing anything.Not doing anything

I&#x27;m moving our of Russia with my family. I was glad that my business was already outside of it. Now this domain stuff just added up to a pile of problems I must solve.And the effect is negative - I moved domains out of NameCheap to Russia simply because any other US or EU based registrar can do the same crazy thing and are not trusted.So Putin&#x27;s regime actually got more money out of this.

You&#x27;ll get refunded on any time you have left on that service. (hosting, email)

You&#x27;ll be fine, please contact us and we&#x27;ll get you whitelisted. Point here if any confusion with our support team.

Hi! I&#x27;m in the same boat, I left Russia 5 years ago and now I live in the US and all my billing&#x2F;account addresses are also registered in the US. I&#x27;m confused as to why I got the termination email.

Could you clarify what exactly is a &quot;user registered in Russia&quot; that you are banning? I left the country (because of the government), and now have american billing info in my account, but I still got the termination email.

I agree that this move seems too abrupt. Fulfilling current paid services and setting a reasonable deadline for final renewal (if payment is still available, which may be out of your control) and a reasonable maximum term length for any renewals would provide a lot more business continuity.Maybe you&#x27;re not worried about business continuity of the newly sanctioned customers, but other customers who aren&#x27;t currently sanctioned but may be subject to future sanctions because they don&#x27;t control the regime they live in would appreciate a more reasonable continuity process.Of course, if these sanctions are as a result of legal requirements, gotta follow the law. But, so far, there doesn&#x27;t seem to be a blanket ban on business with people in Russia; other than banking restrictions make it hard to transact.

Dear Namecheap CEO,A better way you could have done this would be to announce non-renewal but have a single-renewal escape clause for people who are too busy to deal with it. This would allow you to make your point without shafting the consumer. You could also have given something back like a one-time at-cost discount on moving to new replacement domains. You know, act in solidarity with your customer instead of against them.PS. It&#x27;s not too late to fix this. Be part of the internet we love, the internet that crosses borders and joins people.Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind. - Einstein

I&#x27;ve paid in full for four domains just four days ago -- some two hours before I was thrown into a police bus. I may understand why you did this, but this is a low move, nonetheless.Tax dollars or not, you&#x27;re imposing extra costs on your users, most of which relied on your services for decades, and terminating any trust they ever had in your services.

I don&#x27;t think they ( namecheap) has a choice, considering a lot of their employees live&#x2F;lived in Ukraine.

Exactly! The tech community is the epicenter of change in Russia, same as in most places.My situation is different, but equally anecdotal. I left Russia years ago, as soon as I could. My company isn&#x27;t in Russia. I don&#x27;t pay taxes in Russia. I am not even Russian by ethnicity, but I have relatives in Russia and I am still holding a Russian passport. Does that make me a bad person? Even if I were Russian, is it against the ICANN rules to belong to certain ethnicities or nationalities?As a final note, people who live in CIS all have friends in both countries. For them the war is real and not on a TV screen. Imagine how many hours will those people waste changing those damn configs instead of helping people in need in both Ukraine and Russia...

I really hope the CEO, Richard Kirkendall, responds to your comment. It would be cowardly not to do so.Edit: It seems like he has responded to other comments but not this one.

&gt;Unlike you, I&#x27;ve been protesting the regime for several years, putting my health and well-being at riskIf you&#x27;ve been protesting your regime for years, why don&#x27;t you also understand their protest?It seems like you are both aligned here.

Have you already stopped paying taxes, that fund this war?

Your anger is understandable, but think of it this way: you are both fighting the same fight. Their action may well shorten the length of the remaining time for Putin, gives a very small comfort to their employees and if enough companies do this then it will hopefully make some real change for the better. Russia may be able to exist in isolation from the world, but not for long.

You fight with the weapons you have. If you have a rock to defend your family with, you fight with the rock. The guy you kill with the rock is, realistically, probably as innocent as the commoners back in Russia.If you have the ability to hit the Russian government where it hurts - in their money - not using it to defend your employees is as unconscionable as not picking up that rock to defend your family.War has never differentiated between innocent and guilty in the past, nor can it differentiate today. It&#x27;s a battle between governments, and people who are really hurt will always be the innocent.Fuck war. But don&#x27;t blame someone for defending themselves, their family, their employees, with the weapons they have, not the weapons you wish they had.

&gt; So I&#x27;m also very angry at you, for screwing me overJust out of curiosity, how are you screwed? Is it so hard to move to a different registrar? It&#x27;s not like you are being kicked out from a cloud provider, which would indeed be a pain in the ass.

The list of countries that the US has invaded is so deep. We must have solidarity with each-other and hold sociopathic leaders accountable, the way current sanctions are being structured is imo targetting civilians much more than russian elite or oligarchs. I wish nothing but peace for Russian and Ukrainian people, good luck friend.

so, putin was right! the west hate us! russophobia!please...Nobody hates Russians. Hell, I like Russians a lot. But this is war. World is unfair. I hope you see your &quot;sanction&quot; is such a minor grievance if compared to people that just died in an unjust war. That&#x27;s why it would have been more elegant and with decorum just to be silent and accept this without whining that (omg!) your domain needs to move.

&gt; People that are getting angry need to point that at the cause, their own government.Believe me, I&#x27;m very angry at my government. Unlike you, I&#x27;ve been protesting the regime for several years, putting my health and well-being at risk. I&#x27;ve donated thousands of dollars to anti-regime organizations. And I&#x27;m currently in the process of fleeing the country because of this.So I&#x27;m also very angry at you, for screwing me over when I&#x27;m in a really fucking vulnerable position, as well as hundreds other developers who depended on your company.

I can&#x27;t transfer domains to another domain registrar because I have to pay &quot;Transfer Fee&quot;. I can&#x27;t do this because the payment through my Russian cards does not go through. Now I need to go to the Russian domain registrar and pay them to transfer domains from NameCheap.

also, we&#x27;ve preemptively invaded two countries (UN war crimes also) and our oligarchs get to keep their mansions and yachts and none of them will ever see the inside of a prison cell. we should absolutely condemn Putin, but I wish we&#x27;d also lock up our own war criminals.

I hope you take this same stance against USA and their drone strikes of civilians. I don&#x27;t see how any good company can anyway work with those people either.

We&#x27;ve never focused any of our business in China with intention. I didn&#x27;t want our company to acquise and sell it&#x27;s soul to do business there so we purposely avoided it all these years. We may have some customers there but not very many that I am aware of.

Just keep looking out for  when they attack a western&#x2F;white majority country. Then, yes.

&gt; Putin has announced recently that cross-border payments in USD and EUR are to be blocked. Which means that most Russians affected by this won&#x27;t be able to pay for a registrar outside of Russia.THISI&#x27;ve paid upfront exactly because of this, I was expecting some kind of ban of cross-border bank transfers. The same reason I&#x27;ve paid for my VPN upfront. No one in Russia, especially those who are politically active, can&#x27;t really go around without some kind of self-hosted infrastructure.Now, should Namecheap lag even a little bit with a transfer, which I&#x27;ve HAD to pay for (thankfully, I was able to use other provider rather than nic.ru), I will be left without my private XMPP service, self-hosted e-mail and a lot of stuff which makes my communications at least relatively safe.While making such moves, they just made my life more dangerous, at time when government already looks for someone on the inside to blame.

Wouldn&#x27;t that mean those people couldn&#x27;t pay namecheap anyway?

&gt; Which means that Putin actually receives more money because of this.When you cut a country off from trade, obviously some agents within that country are going to get more business.

Most registers accept other currencies too, like GBP, CAD or AUD which you didn&#x27;t mention as being blocked.

Putin receives not only more money, it also makes censorship easier.

&gt; NIC.RU, the state-owned registrar.But without SWIFT, will they have trouble to pay the ICANN fee?

&gt; Which means that Putin actually receives more money because of this.Realistically how much money are we talking about?

Pardon my ignorance, but doesn&#x27;t nic.ru already make money for each .ru domain that is registered?Much like Verisign makes money for each .com&#x2F;.net and Affilias makes money for each .name&#x2F;.org that is registered?Isn&#x27;t the whole point of running a registry that you also get to collect some sort of fee for running the service?

&gt; We haven&#x27;t blocked the domains, we are asking people to move.Putin has announced recently that cross-border payments in USD and EUR are to be blocked. Which means that most Russians affected by this won&#x27;t be able to pay for a registrar outside of Russia.People here have mentioned transferring their domain names to NIC.RU, the state-owned registrar. Which means that Putin actually receives more money because of this.Speaking of taxes. What about people who used the domains for personal use? Or for non-profit orgs?

We&#x27;ll definitely consider extending the deadline if it is causing problems.

It would be rightful, if only Namecheap wouldn&#x27;t deny me reimbursement for their move. =( They&#x27;re just getting away with the money.

I am an American and lucky not to have anything in Russia but as a namecheap customer, I urge you to please be patient with people and give them time to move. I understand the decision you made and it is your right to do so but please do not block someone just because they couldn&#x27;t do it by a certain date. I am sure you know but empathy is really needed right now. Your March 6 deadline worries me.

FYI &quot;ensure&quot; is misspelled as &quot;insure&quot; on the banner that shows on every page.

If the US started bombing Ukraine, would you really complain about Ukrainians cutting off American access to their services?

&gt; People that are getting angry need to point that at the cause, their own government.I&#x27;m in this thread getting angry and I live in California. Are you prepared to be consistent by looking into my government&#x27;s &quot;war crimes and human rights violations&quot;?

Of course you are. Any service provider will have the power to deny you further service. Businesses are going under because they were exposed to sanctions due to trading mostly in Russian goods. They can&#x27;t really do much about that either.

It seems the answer is clearly Yes, you are in danger of losing your account if Erdogan does something crazy. I&#x27;m confused why you would ask this question. Russians are being banned for the crazy actions of Putin, why wouldn&#x27;t Turks be if their country engaged in similar actions.

Just “contact their support” or be on the lookout here on hn and CEO will sure be “making exceptions” in hn comments. Don’t fret.

&gt; Am I in danger of losing my Namecheap account if Erdoğan (the dictator) does something even more crazy than usual, in the future?Yes. To keep your account active, please simply instigate a revolution against Erdoğan and achieve regime change. Thanks.

It seems clear that the answer is you are in danger of losing much more than a domain if Erdogan does something crazy. You&#x27;re in danger of losing your ability to do business with other countries at all. You&#x27;re in danger of being conscripted into the army and sent to your death (or dying resisting said conscription orders). Hell, you&#x27;re in danger of the crazy thing just being Erdogan deciding to sentence you to death for a made up crime.To some degree there are just inevitable risks in life, but it&#x27;s absolutely in your interest to influence your government into doing as few terrible things as possible, and to move to one that does less terrible things, and I for one think that&#x27;s a very good thing.

Would you give me a list of &quot;wrong&quot; things I shouldn&#x27;t do, or &quot;wrong&quot; places I shouldn&#x27;t live, in order to not have my service terminated in the future?  I live in Turkey sometimes.  Am I in danger of losing my Namecheap account if Erdoğan (the dictator) does something even more crazy than usual, in the future?

Tampering with your customers data would destroy confidence in their business and might actually be a violation of the law.

&gt; But as you&#x27;ve probably seen from all the &#x27;prisoners of war&#x27; videos out of Ukraine, most soldiers don&#x27;t want to fight this war.You should not believe them. They might be just lying.

&gt; But as you&#x27;ve probably seen from all the &#x27;prisoners of war&#x27; videos out of Ukraine, most soldiers don&#x27;t want to fight this war.Most soldiers? How many remorseful POWs have you seen vs. the ~200k soldiers actively participating in the war?Some POWs will say almost anything to not get killed and have a chance at freedom again. Just like in a trial, a statement or confession made under duress is not valid and they’re likely under extreme duress and afraid for their lives.

Be very careful forming opinion about Russia&#x27;s army based on these videos. These videos are intended to help other Russian soldiers decide to surrender (&quot;you&#x27;ll be treated well&quot; message) and that&#x27;s about it.They are ruthless and this war is going to be absolutely ruthless if it will not stop soon. Russians had no trouble bombing and shelling sieged cities, hospitals, and even UN convoys in Syria, and they&#x27;ll do it in Ukraine, too. They&#x27;re alredy using cluster munitions in the city streets, shit like butterfly mines, etc., and it&#x27;s going to be a lot worse once they set up heavy artilery and complete the sieges.This time they&#x27;ll not be able to lie about it in the west all that easilly, judging by the reaction in my country. Xenophobia will be less of a hindrance to seeing things clearly, at least in some eastern european countries, compared to their Syrian involvement.But I&#x27;m already starting to see the same justifications being used to bomb the cities, as was used in Syria.

Are you sure this will help your objective?Putin is a maniac and his war is horrible.But as you&#x27;ve probably seen from all the &#x27;prisoners of war&#x27; videos out of Ukraine, most soldiers don&#x27;t want to fight this war.Russians that are savvy enough to setup their own domain, will also be the ones that use a VPN to read foreign news. Very few in the Russian &quot;tech scene&quot; like Putin.Shutting down their means of communication may make it harder for them to stage demonstrations, etc.Instead, you should &quot;magically&quot; add emails to their inboxes, with e.g. Zelenskyy&#x27;s speech to the Russian people, or add banners when they login to control panels etc.(I&#x27;m not Russian btw, I live in another European country and not a customer)

How about you just stop collecting taxes in Russia instead of cutting them off?Either way, I&#x27;m noting you down for BDS.I suggest you also employ people in Palestine, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Myanmar, Kashmir, etc.

&gt; I don&#x27;t know what led you to believe that russian citizens can just wake up one day and decide to kick out the government, but I am sorry to say that this is not true.Dude, that is how it works. Due to the nukes, the only ones who can remove Putin is the Russian people.A large percentage of Russians still support Putin, the sanctions are a great motivator for fixing that issue.

Just because you disagree with someone doesn&#x27;t mean they didn&#x27;t think it through. I&#x27;m a customer for 10 years and will continue to be after this.

Ukrainian citizens are doing just fine at kicking your governments ass at this time, sacrificing their lives while at it. Time to do more and rise up. If they can do it, you can. Take control against your own corrupt and bloodthirsty government, at least you won&#x27;t be under threat of nuclear attack and constant carpet bombing like the ukrainians while you&#x27;re doing it.

War by its very nature creates economic disruptions. Today there are business who are liable to be out of commission not because they have ideological differences but because their employees are uninterred corpses lying where they were murdered or their offices are bombed out husks. Expected business that by its very nature crosses borders between victim states and aggressor states to continue as normal is in fact itself the unreasonable position. It&#x27;s like standing in the streets where the bombs are falling and shouting loudly about your sandwich being late.Lets take a moment to examine the language you are using. The language given described the reason they feel they need to take the action they are taking even if you disagree with their reasoning but you have baselessly redefined it as &quot;spite&quot; and a &quot;childish tantrum&quot;. It looks like exactly the opposite.They have chosen as is their right not to do business with some customers and you suggest that by forcing clients to spending a few hours migrating to another providers they are &quot;attacking them&quot;.The only people being attacked are those who are getting shot and blown up. Tone down your rhetoric and don&#x27;t make events of international and historic scope about you. Expand your perspective.

This kind of reaction is exactly why more businesses need to take this approach. It&#x27;s painfully inconvenient for a Russian who has an interest in being able to use the service, and the more this occurs, the less anyone is happy to just sit by.

You&#x27;re missing the point. It&#x27;s supposed to inconvenience the Russian people.You can&#x27;t have it both -- benefit from western companies and technology, but keep a leader in power that is completely indifferent to any human life and suffering other than (arguably) the one of the Russian people.We like to think that we&#x27;re all just citizens under the rule of the few, but we&#x27;re all complicit in who governs us, whether we like to admit to it or not.In the west we&#x27;re all very aware that any kind of regime change in Russia will involve bloodshed amongst innocent Russian people, but that is already happening right now -- except you&#x27;ve exported the genocide to your neighbors, Belarus and Ukraine, and that is unacceptable.

Best comment so far. The mail ia indeed immature and the actions are unproductive.

Everything about this screams immaturity. You didn&#x27;t think about this, how it would affect others, whether or not it would actually improve anything for anyone, etc. This doesn&#x27;t affect the Russian government in any way whatsoever. You are not making a difference, not a positive one anyway. You&#x27;re acting purely based on spite, attacking mostly innocent people in any way you can purely because they are living under a government you disagree with, not necessarily by choice. I don&#x27;t know what led you to believe that russian citizens can just wake up one day and decide to kick out the government, but I am sorry to say that this is not true.Thankfully I don&#x27;t use namecheap, but if I did, I would be moving my domains out of it right now, russian or not. I do not wish to rely on a service run by people who may throw a childish tantrum and terminate my service at any time due to something I may not have any control over.

Well actually lets take youtube. Being removed from youtube doesn&#x27;t keep you from being heard at all by people willing to directly seek you out but it does directly keep your content being organically exposed to youtube users potentially greatly decreasing your actual exposure.Unlike youtube domain registration is fungible. Moving from namecheap to &lt;insert registrar&gt; means your computer is silently switched from talking to foo vs bar with no apparent difference to the end user.It only becomes and effective means of deplatforming if your registrar doesn&#x27;t allow you to transfer your domain or you literally can&#x27;t find a registrar who will accept you.

&gt;&quot;There are plenty of other choices out there when it comes to infrastructure services so this isn&#x27;t &quot;deplatforming&quot;.&quot;This is still &#x27;de-platforming&#x27;, even though there are alternatives. There are alternatives to every service that has &#x27;de-platformed&#x27; people, but it doesn&#x27;t change what you&#x27;re doing.

My domains will be moving from your service as a result.

Contact us, we&#x27;ll make exceptions in cases like this. Thanks for what you are doing.

Thank you for coming out like this and doing what you are doing, at the same time: this also isn&#x27;t your fight, you are like those people hiding in the Ukraine subways hoping they&#x27;ll be alive tomorrow morning: collateral damage on a stage set by a madman. I suspect that there are a lot of people right now wondering if continuing with Putin is worth it so please don&#x27;t stop, you may be close to some kind of resolution.

Thank you for everything you&#x27;re doing.

&gt; I&#x27;m not complaining. While I did try to fight against the regime since its beginning, I could&#x27;ve done more. We screwed this up, and we&#x27;re responsible, and all the inconveniences we might have cannot be compared to the suffering of people of Ukraine. Just saying.I&#x27;m so sorry you have to live under these conditions. You don&#x27;t need to compare yourself to the suffering of the Ukrainian people. You&#x27;re also in pain.Have you thought about leaving? Can you and your family and friends easily emigrate?I hope the best for you too.

If you are fighting against the regime then this is only helping.If enough people get inconvenienced that would normally not think twice, maybe there is a chance it will turn their heads to think for a second about what is happening around them.

Thank you for what you and your team are doing. OVD Info is very important project for Russian civil society and we shall not let you down.

Thank you and all the OVD Info for your work.

&gt;And, you know, those people you want to point at their own government, they won&#x27;t get it.There are thousands of people &#x27;getting it&#x27; being arrested on the streets of Moscow.

I&#x27;m not even from Russia and I&#x27;ll be busy transferring my domains as well because I don&#x27;t want to find out in coming days that my government farted the wrong way and I have to bare the consequences (It&#x27;s one of those countries that keep abstaining from anti Russian votes so who knows if it might be clubbed with Russia in the moral court of Namecheap).

I get that, and you&#x27;re totally entitled to do this. And you&#x27;re probably right that ends justify the means. And, probably, total damage will be worth it. But, in my insignificant personal case, I will be busy moving domains and paying for transfers instead of doing what I&#x27;ve been doing and spending money on what I&#x27;ve been spending it for the last 5 days, helping people detained and&#x2F;or arrested for participating in anti-war protests (as a volunteer, see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ovdinfo.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ovdinfo.org&#x2F;</a>).And, you know, those people you want to point at their own government, they won&#x27;t get it. They&#x27;re brainwashed by Putin&#x27;s propaganda which has reached true Goebbels level. It was going there for a while, Putin&#x27;s regime began with gradually shutting down free media 20 years ago. Yes, people do have internet, and Russian internet is full of Putin&#x27;s propaganda. Russian authorities are banning websites telling the truth (yes there&#x27;s a government powered DPI firewall which every major ISP has to install by law). And they&#x27;re working on a law which will make it a crime with 15 years of sentence just for calling the war the war. So I wouldn&#x27;t count on that. The only thing that might work is hearing the truth from friends and families, but it&#x27;s very hard to talk to those people. I&#x27;m trying, though, when there&#x27;s still at least some reasoning.I&#x27;m not complaining. While I did try to fight against the regime since its beginning, I could&#x27;ve done more. We screwed this up, and we&#x27;re responsible, and all the inconveniences we might have cannot be compared to the suffering of people of Ukraine. Just saying.

BS no shoes, no shirt, no service. Ever heard about that? If we were a monopoly, fine, there are plenty of other services out there. Over 1000 registrars including several in Russia.

Just to be clear, this is definitionally &quot;deplatforming&quot;. Having &quot;plenty of other choices&quot; doesn&#x27;t change that. There are always other choices.

I&#x27;ll be migrating my small account of about 15 domains away from Namecheap due to this.  I have Russian friends that I respect and hate to see negative action taken against them due to the unfortunate and despicable actions of their government.

Perhaps this will cut down on the fraudulent domain names being used to impersonate real companies that invariably end up being hosted on Namecheap? Support has stopped answering my tickets even when I provide all the material requested in your abuse policy. Stop offering 30 day free domain registrations and 50% of the fraud domains would go away in 31 days. Really, please make it stop.

By all means, promote the Ukraine point of view (I support them 100%). For example, put up links to the speech Zelenskyy did in Russian, aimed at the Russian people.Ukraine themselves understand how to fight the information war. You treat your prisoners of war well, give them tea and let them call their parents. They&#x27;ll tell their parents that Putin sent them on a murder campaign on a neighbor, and that they&#x27;re lucky to be alive and treated well.That&#x27;s how you play the game.

They don&#x27;t care about the impact or people, they just want to virtue signal.

&gt; Look at European and US sanctions, they&#x27;re way more clever about it:No, we&#x27;re way past this with things like leading semiconductor manufacturers stopping deliveries to any Russian entity. The goal has shifted to depriving Russia of resources needed to wage a war. Soon Russians will be so poor that their government will have their hands full keeping domestic dissent under control, and hopefully won&#x27;t be able to wage foreign wars.This is cancer treatment on a global scale. Unfortunately, it damages not only the tumor, but rest of the body as well, but there are no other options left.

Look at European and US sanctions, they&#x27;re way more clever about it:- Aim of sanctions is to turn Russians against Putin.- Obviously, you want to target those that don&#x27;t already hate Putin (no point in preaching to the choir).- Sanctions should be felt, but should also direct more anger at government than the entity doing sanctions.- For example, sanctioning a hospital or stopping medical supplies into Russia would be a stupid sanction.- Second, you want to focus them on people who have sway. Most sanctions are focused on the wealthy and influential Russians. Forbidding oligarchs from living luxury lives in Europe is a good one.- Your Russian users are very unlikely to hold any sway over Putin, and I&#x27;d bet 95% of them already hate Putin (no need to convince them) -- it&#x27;s a tech crowd.- My guess is that the vast majority of Namecheap customer&#x27;s are exactly the ones that will protest against Putin, or organize information campaigns against him. Removing their means of communication won&#x27;t advance your objective.- If EU&#x2F;US would sanction Kasparov or Navalny that would be a 0 IQ move, it&#x27;s just an extremely dumb thing. This is sort of along those lines.(I&#x27;m not Russian btw, I live in another European country and not a customer)

If companies banned Americans over the invasion of Iraq, I would have wholeheartedly supported it, especially if the majority of that company&#x27;s employees were Iraqis.Companies should have freedom to associate, and people can criticize them for it and&#x2F;or switch to another service provider.This is also why monopolies are such an underrated threat to society. They give too much power to a single, unelected person. Namecheap is in a crowded space, so I&#x27;m not worried about it in this case.

I’m an American. My government is also prone to boneheaded invasions of other sovereign countries. Does this mean I should save myself the potential future hassle and find another provider too?

The logical line would be non combatants dying avoidable deaths. For example if Russia were so impoverished that people were starving to death we should try to feed them. It is indeed absolutely OK economically punish a country in order to inspire them to vote against leaders who are murdering their neighbors.

&gt; but ultimately even those tax dollars they may generate go to the regimeSo you&#x27;re essentially saying is that it would be better if Russian civilians suffer poverty, where do you even draw the line with this reasoning?

&gt; which is always what happens when a protest or sanction inconveniences someoneNot at all. It’s this particular message and phrasing that rubs me entirely the wrong way.As well as all the people here that claim Russians should have done more to stop this.

I know you&#x27;re getting a ton of negative reactions here, which is always what happens when a protest or sanction inconveniences someone.I just wanted to voice that I think this is a moral decision and though I am happy with my current registrar, I am going to consider switching to Namecheap, or at least using you guys next time I register a new domain.

&gt; Putin was right and West is against them.Counter point: Look at West Germany and Japan after WWII. The West changed tack pretty quickly after the war ended. The West wasn’t against the people, they were against the ruling parties and the infrastructure&#x2F;policies that supported it.If it’s possible to punish an authoritarian aggressor without harming the citizens, I’d love to hear ideas. But in Germany and Japan, the average citizen paid a huge price for getting caught up on the wrong side of the war and I’m not sure how much differently it could have been done without countering the unprovoked aggression of both nations of which other country’s citizens paid a huge price.

&gt; Putin was right and West is against themIf having to transfer a domain sends someone scurrying to Putin, they were far from innocent to start with.

You are doing really dumb and hateful thing. The people that will be affected by this are usually the same who sponsor or even are the opposition. They were fighting Putin long before the war started and long before you started caring about it. It’s the same as to stop selling paper to members of White Rose resistance group [1], because they were Germans. A clear signal that risking your freedom or life does not worth it, because the world hates you no matter what you do.
Russian people will pay very high price without your involvement: by not being humane, you just show them that Putin was right and West is against them.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;White_Rose" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;White_Rose</a>

Thank you. I haven&#x27;t used Namecheap in the past, but I will consider it in the future. I hope more western companies that care about the rule of law follow suit.

&gt; To everyone complaining, have you first tried to contact support and explained your situation?Spending hours writing emails back and forth in my non-native language is not exactly my top priority at the moment, as you may guess because of recent events.The email is very clear: I have to move regardless of my views or opinions, or else. ToS is very standard as well: service may be interrupted at any moment with no guarantees, all discussion is to happen in US courts.I see no basis for a support ticket.

Maybe as an individual I could see supporting them, but as someone who works in the corporate world and actually needs to rely on services like this, I wouldn’t risk doing business with a company that might change their TOS at the drop of a hat because of the political views of their CEO or some geopolitical event.

Seems like not a great time for their chat support to be down for maintenance.Incidentally I am in the process of transferring a domain to namecheap today.

As a long time Namecheap user, I support your decision.To everyone complaining, have you first tried to contact support and explained your situation? It&#x27;s clear that Namecheap will talk to you to understand your situation and help where it can. It&#x27;s also one of the reasons why I switched to them many years back. Not every company hides behind their nameless, automated robots.

Why do you support this dump decision as it doesn’t help fighting the regime?I just learnt in hard way that I am blamed for being Russian citizen(by ethnicity I’m not Russian), even if I live, work, pay all taxes in the UK?How it’s different from nazis blaming Jewish for being Jewish?

I support your stance on this.Speaking as a Namecheap customer for several years now.

This is disgusting. You are punishing innocent people for the decisions of their government. Do you even realize that your behavior does not help your own cause? Do you realize that innocent Russian people banned from your platform will be encouraged to further hate the United States and support their government&#x27;s war effort?

So, you are trying to make Russian people’s life even worse nevertheless you understand that they have nothing to do with the situation? How are you better than Russian government?

Are you following a law or just arbitrarily and unilaterally deciding to do this? I am not Russian myself but I expect a domain name provider to be extremely neutral, unopinionated, and stable. Namecheap is showing to be neither so it can’t be trusted for important domains.

&gt; tax dollarsFirst of all, tax rubles.Second of all, tax rubles of your customers are negligible compared to oil money. The basic scheme of Russia is that the guards are paid the first cut of oil money. Removing even more options from the general population, and reducing their contact with the West, just makes them weaker compared to the guards. Thanks.

How do you get off punishing normal people for the supposed crimes of their government? Are you going to go back and retroactively ban U.S. users for the many war crimes various regimes have committed over the years? Are you from the U.S.? Maybe you should just resign -- no point in you having a &quot;platform&quot; as an executive when your government has committed such atrocities around the world.

I have been a (US, before you accuse me of being Russian like you have done elsewhere in the thread) Namecheap customer for years, and have urged at least a dozen others to use your service. I won&#x27;t be doing that in the future, your responses in this thread have killed any trust and goodwill I had for your service.

Someone should make a list of websites and services that ban users based on ethnicity&#x2F;nationality. I for one, will stay away from services like namecheap (I am neither Russian nor Ukranian), simply because this doesn&#x27;t help anyone, but will be used as justification by the pro-Putin guys.

75% of their company is based in Ukraine.

Russian forces are literally bombing their offices in Kharkiv. How is it &quot;virtue signaling&quot; to say you&#x27;re not happy to sell your services to the country trying to kill you?this whole thread and people&#x27;s responses disgust me, people saying they&#x27;re virtue signaling, and that it&#x27;s &quot;bad business practice&quot; to cut off services like that. They&#x27;re in a warzone and this is what people are upset about?!

I find this action from Namecheap really lazy virtue signalling and your justifications to be hypocritical, for reasons pointed out elsewhere in this thread.If you were really interested in attempting to do the right thing, you would ban on a case-by-case basis, or donate a percentage of your profits to the Red Cross in Ukraine or something. There&#x27;s no justification for this heavy-handed nonsense.I&#x27;ll do my best to stay away from your company.

Namecheap has just ruined its reputation. Giving almost no time for domain transfer is insane. I will avoid using your services at any cost.

&gt; I understand you have a lot of employees in Ukraine and you have to show support. Your heart is in the right place. I empathize and would try to do the same if I was in your shoes.For additional context to readers, according to LinkedIn 834 of 1,137 employees (73.35%) are located in Ukraine.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;company&#x2F;namecheap-inc&#x2F;people&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;company&#x2F;namecheap-inc&#x2F;people&#x2F;</a>

&gt;Your message does not make any excuses like that. You straight up equate being russian &#x2F; living in russia &#x2F; whatever it is with supporting the war. You fell victim to the same primitive xenophobic thinking you&#x27;re claiming to condemn.From parent:&gt;I sympathize with people that are not pro regime but ultimately even those tax dollars they may generate go to the regime.

&gt; I cannot with good conscience continue to support the Russian regime in any way, shape or form. People that are getting angry need to point that at the cause, their own governmentI understand you have a lot of employees in Ukraine and you have to show support. Your heart is in the right place. I empathize and would try to do the same if I was in your shoes. But you didn&#x27;t do a good job here, unfortunately.When gitlab had to make a similar move [0] at least they had a good excuse — security of their customers&#x27; data.Your message does not make any excuses like that. You straight up equate being russian &#x2F; living in russia &#x2F; whatever it is with supporting the war. You fell victim to the same primitive xenophobic thinking you&#x27;re claiming to condemn.This is a bad decision. Being a CEO is a tough job, but I think you could do better. I wish you luck.[0] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21437334" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21437334</a>

Absolutely. This sort of virtue signalling should be frowned upon. I have over a 100 domains in namecheap which is a drop in a bucket I&#x27;m sure for them but I&#x27;ll be moving them to porkbun.

I don&#x27;t support the Russian invasion, I&#x27;m not Russian, and all the other caveats that put me on the &quot;right&quot; side of this.All that to say I am cancelling my Namecheap account and in the future will actively recommend alternatives to your services. Not only is what you&#x27;re doing completely ineffective, it is likely doing more harm than good to decent people.

Thank you for your position and for your support!

GoDaddy&#x27;s CEO ought to send you a fruit basket or something, you just made salesmen of the year!

Why are you giving an unrealistic deadline to transfer the domains away until the 6th if domain transfers take 5-7 days. Will you stop the transfers in the process when the 6th of March comes?

I guess it&#x27;s just hate and discrimination of Slavs. Wouldn&#x27;t believe his lies.

Why not just block renewals and new registrations?  Do you have to pay taxes to Russia on .ru registrations at other times?

&gt; I&#x27;m a US citizen, so roughly half of my gross income goes to support US war crimesThat&#x27;s unlikely, cf. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbpp.org&#x2F;research&#x2F;federal-budget&#x2F;where-do-our-federal-tax-dollars-go" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbpp.org&#x2F;research&#x2F;federal-budget&#x2F;where-do-our-fe...</a>.

you&#x27;re providing 5 days to change registrars and 0 days to change hosts to people who are currently waiting in line for hours at banks to attempt to access their own funds.I&#x27;m a US citizen, so roughly half of my gross income goes to support US war crimes. It seems like I should move off of Namecheap now to avoid disruption to my service in the event that you ever grow a spine.

&gt; I do not care about this war at allThis war has a non-zero chance of becoming a nuclear war that ends all human life on Earth. If you don&#x27;t care about it, you must not care about anything at all, including your own life.There aren&#x27;t that many people who would boycott a business that decides to stop offering services in Russia and there are even fewer who can watch Ukrainian bodies pile up without emotion, so I&#x27;m pretty sure Namecheap doesn&#x27;t mind losing customers like you.

&gt; I do not care about this war at allYou said everything you had to. Wow.

&gt; I do not care about this war at allok. that&#x27;s your problem.

Not Russian (I&#x27;m from Argentina), but I&#x27;ll move all of my domains right away. This is absolutely nuts. I do not care about this war at all, but more importantly, I won&#x27;t be keeping my domains in a registrar that arbitrarily cuts down on customers from being from a particular country.How anyone would support this is beyond me. New world order virtue signalling at it fullest.

I am from neither country but I’m going to move my secondary domain away from namecheap. What you’re doing is not only immature and unfair, it’s simply absurd and stupid. You’re coming across as an edgy and impatient person trying to score some desperate goodwill brownie points.And you know I know for sure it’s immature and stupid? The way you’ve been responding in this thread. “Okay maybe we will extend”, “maybe lenient if we see it’s needed”. Ffs! Looks like someone at namecheap has gone bonkers.

Hey @NamecheapCEO, Ukrainian here. Thanks a lot!Please notice, there needs to be some sort of verification mechanism. The russians have already figured out that simply setting &quot;Ukraine&quot; in profile data a) works b) might suffice to bypass the upcoming restriction.

Donating all income from Russian users to the Ukrainian war efforts or refugee relief efforts would have seemed like a much more satisfying (and effective!) way to go about this.

I genuinely hope this is a joke, REALLY....

Please kindly check your whataboutism at the door. It&#x27;s not HN-caliber discussion.

I think the world has changed in the past twenty years, and I think if the U.S. engages in future foreign wars, maybe they will have to suffer similar consequences from non U.S. companies. I hope so, and I say that as a U.S. citizen.I for one like this. If you are a shitty citizen in our increasing global world, one positive benefit of globalization is the many ways that that global world can now bite you in the ass.There is no excuse for wars of aggression. And in the past people would throw their hands up and say &quot;well what can I do?&quot; Well we are all connected now, so increasingly there is something you can do.

I&#x27;m guessing they don&#x27;t cut off the United States because the United States isn&#x27;t invading and bombing the cities where they operate and have employees.A lot of people are making assumptions about this being a purely PR &quot;woke&quot; move of some kind, ignoring this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.namecheap.com&#x2F;careers&#x2F;ukraine" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.namecheap.com&#x2F;careers&#x2F;ukraine</a>Seems pretty personal to me. If I or my people were actively being bombed by an invading force, I&#x27;d take it personally, too. And then I&#x27;d take action about it.

Why don’t you cut off United States citizens while you are at it? The regime that has probably done more damage and caused more instability to the world than any other country. The U.S. uses the entire world as their playground couping any Government that disagrees with them or refuses to bend to their demands and bombing their citizens and civilians. What about the atrocities and war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan? Syria? Libya? Yemen? Etc.Just because it is covered up or whitewashed by the media in the U.S. does not mean it is not happening.Blaming the citizens of a country for the actions of their Government is absolutely atrocious behavior. I used to have all my domains on Namecheap. I have since moved them, but now I will make sure I never use your service ever again and will never recommend you to anyone else either.Also the argument that tax money is supporting the regime is ridiculous. If citizens could CHOOSE how their tax money was spent it would be one thing, but in the U.S. our tax money has literally gone to providing weapons and training to terrorist organizations.Again, this doesn’t EXCUSE the actions of the Russian government, but taking their people hostage to use as leverage is disgusting and despicable.

We haven&#x27;t blocked the domains, we are asking people to move. There are plenty of other choices out there when it comes to infrastructure services so this isn&#x27;t &quot;deplatforming&quot;. I sympathize with people that are not pro regime but ultimately even those tax dollars they may generate go to the regime. We have people on the ground in Ukraine being bombarded now non stop. I cannot with good conscience continue to support the Russian regime in any way, shape or form. People that are getting angry need to point that at the cause, their own government. If more grace time is necessary for some to move, we will provide it. Free speech is one thing but this decision is more about a government that is committing war crimes against innocent people that we want nothing to do with.

Just received this email:Dear XXXX,Unfortunately, due to the Russian regime&#x27;s war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine, we will no longer be providing services to users registered in Russia. While we sympathize that this war may not affect your own views or opinion on the matter, the fact is, your authoritarian government is committing human rights abuses and engaging in war crimes so this is a policy decision we have made and will stand by.If you hold any top-level domains with us, we ask that you transfer them to another provider by March 6, 2022.Additionally, and with immediate effect, you will no longer be able to use Namecheap Hosting, EasyWP, and Private Email with a domain provided by another registrar in zones .ru, .xn--p1ai (рф), .by, .xn--90ais (бел), and .su. All websites will resolve to 403 Forbidden, however, you can contact us to assist you with your transfer to another provider.Customer Support,
Namecheap

Namecheap: Russia Service Termination