2020 is off to a rocky start for online cannabis consumers as domain suspensions plague mail order marijuana sites in Canada (at a domain level). Since the Cannabis Act of October 17, 2018, agencies struggled with reducing the market share of grey area cannabis delivery websites online.
The Cannabis Act legalized the production, sale and distribution of cannabis across Canada, the one issue perhaps overlooked, the current climate guiding the cannabis consumer culture. Quality, pricing, and width of product lines have seen mail order cannabis website revenues flourishing since legalization. From the sidelines it seems like a simple equation. Wait for government regulation to market the products, let the government do the press, the media do the marketing, then pounce on eCommerce, minus the regulation.
Mail Order Marijuana Domain Suspensions
What Happened?
Since the start of 2020 there’s been chatter of domain suspensions targeting Canadian MOMS. A number of Canadian mail order marijuana sites were taken down throughout the past weeks, reasons seemingly unknown.
This week we were contacted by a handful of mail order cannabis website owners that had been the subject of website take downs between January 15th and 16th. All the websites were .ca domains, and emails were set from GoDaddy’s Digital Crimes Unit. Sites like Calgary Weed Delivery mogul, Supherbs are back up and running as per usual.
Mail Order Marijuana Domains Confirmed Effected
- www.speedgreens.ca – Now www.speedgreens.com
- www.budexpress.ca
- www.buymyweedonline.ca
- www.supherbs.ca
- www.cannabis-kings.ca – Now www.cannabis-kings.net
- www.canadaweeddispensary.ca
Our Thoughts…
Thus far, it seems as though the Digital Crimes Unit of GoDaddy has been very active in 2020. Check out the canadianmom.info forums to see the recent changes to a number of .ca domains. The Extract Team attempted to contact a spokesman for GoDaddy but after hours of holds and wrong departments were unsuccessful.
We did manage to track down a copy of the email sent out to many of the mail order sites, and they things stand out.
- They are all .CA domains
- Domains are suspended, not the hosting
- Cyber Crimes Unit is sending the emails, not the CIRA who traditionally manages domains
