14 DAY TRIAL // Ten-year-old French registrar revoked without any prior notice its SSL certificates at the end of March 2010 for the GoogleSharing.net privacy service. This action took the service down for more than four days until the site's admins found a way around their SSL certificate inconvenience.
GoogleSharing.net was providing an anonymization proxy for Internet users to have their actions hidden from Google's all-knowing eye. The service was helping users hide their online activity from Google's tracking services, and preserve a more adequate level of privacy when surfing on the web.
To get this level of privacy, users had to install a Mozilla Firefox plugin developed by the GoogleSharing team. This browser add-on provided a secure connection among the user, the proxy, and Google's servers. While the search giant only recorded the proxy's actions, the user was free to roam the Internet. The plugin also had a unique feature of detecting Google connections, and getting only in the middle of those, leaving the other browser connections untouched.
Because the service was built to function using an SSL certificate, when Gandi revoked the certificate without any notice to the GoogleSharing crew, the entire service was brought down with it.
While the support team offered HTTP alternatives, it took them about four days to fix the problem for the Firefox plugin. The update (v0.17) resolved the SSL issue, but by this time, the majority of its user base had already stopped using the service. According to The Register, the service recorded a downfall in average output from 4Mbps to 300kbps, after it came back online.
The reason behind the sudden decision to revoke the SSL certificate was “due to multiple and deliberate serious breaches” of the Gandi Terms of Service and “fraudulent activity.” The registrar's concern was mainly due to the fact that the trademark violation took place when the privacy service registered the domain, using the “Google” registered trademark in the site's name.
Download the GoogleSharing Firefox plugin from Softpedia here.
