GoDaddy warns India fake-site crackdown could hurt legitimate businesses

GoDaddy has challenged a Delhi High Court order that would force domain registrars to stop offering privacy protection by default and disclose registrant details within 72 hours to anyone claiming a legitimate interest. The company says the rules would expose names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of legitimate website owners and could make the internet less safe for ordinary businesses.

Indian courts had blocked more than 1,100 fraudulent websites by December 2025, and dozens of Indian and global companies have sued over impersonation cases involving names such as Amazon and McDonald's. India received 2.4 million complaints of alleged cyber fraud last year, totaling about $2.4 billion, and Ministry of Finance data cited in March 2025 showed 2.4 million digital financial fraud incidents in the first 10 months of FY25 involving 4,245 crore.

GoDaddy has filed its challenge before a larger bench of the Delhi High Court. The appeal file ran to more than 5,000 pages. The next hearing was set for July 16, 2026. The company argues that the 72-hour disclosure rule gives registrars too little time to judge who has a legitimate interest in private registration data, and that the order would be difficult to implement across a business built on cross-border domain sales.

Domain names do not stop at national boundaries, so a rule aimed at Indian fraud could pressure registrars to police website addresses worldwide and could conflict with privacy-by-default standards used elsewhere. The Delhi High Court’s December 24, 2025 judgment in the Dabur matter was uploaded on January 12, 2026.