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domains The Impact of WHOIS Display on Domain Sales

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Who should decide whether WHOIS is visible?

  • This poll is still running and the standings may change.
  • This poll is still running and the standings may change.

Long before General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance was a topic, GoDaddy and other registrars adopted a practice of obscuring WHOIS records and/or requiring persons interested in knowing the identity of the registrant to visit their website to retrieve the properly formed WHOIS report.

For example:

Domain Name: DONALDTRUMP.COM
Registry Domain ID: 5014087_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com
Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com
Updated Date: 2018-06-28T21:52:39Z
Creation Date: 1999-03-07T05:00:00Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2019-07-01T03:59:59Z
Registrar: GoDaddy.com, LLC
Registrar IANA ID: 146
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: [email protected]
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.4806242505
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited
Domain Status: clientUpdateProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientUpdateProhibited
Domain Status: clientRenewProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientRenewProhibited
Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientDeleteProhibited
Registrant Organization: THE TRUMP ORGANIZATION
Registrant State/Province: New York
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Email: Select Contact Domain Holder link at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?domain=DONALDTRUMP.COM
Admin Email: Select Contact Domain Holder link at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?domain=DONALDTRUMP.COM
Tech Email: Select Contact Domain Holder link at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?domain=DONALDTRUMP.COM
Name Server: MEGAN.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM
Name Server: MILES.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM
DNSSEC: unsigned
URL of the ICANN WHOIS Data Problem Reporting System: http://wdprs.internic.net/

If you follow the URL, you do get a properly formed WHOIS report after getting past the reCAPTCHA.

Do professional domain investors accept these extra steps and tolerate the idea that their WHOIS data is masked or otherwise obscured, effectively forcing people to contact registrants through other means?

At the same time, ad blocking software have made many conventional parking landers effectively blank screens. Some parking companies have started to pivot using landers but most parking is still an easy ad block.

I ask this because I realize that many domain sellers have had a tough few months with selling domains. It dawned on me that the drop in domain selling activity appeared to coincide with GDPR rollout which kicked off in earnest on May 25, 2018 and where many registrars simply masked everything on WHOIS.

For anyone involved in domain selling as a profession, or relying on it as a supplemental source of income, it seems to me that this was a disservice to registrants. To this day, anyone who owns a Donuts domain name has 100% of the Personally Identifying Information masked and there is still no way to override it.

At Epik, we did not enforce GDPR outside of the EU and gave registrants the ability to opt out of free WHOIS privacy proxy services where the WHOIS email still forwards to an actual email address even if the GDPR-compliant domain was privacy protected. We also do not require a reCAPTCHA for WHOIS searches. Anecdotally, Epik has seen no drop in domain sales or inquiries for .COM but has seen a drop in Donuts registry domain inquiries except through domain marketplaces and MLS searches.

I am curious to hear what professional domain investors think about their experience since May 2018 with navigating WHOIS policies, and also about any apparent or observed correlation between WHOIS data visibility with domain sales.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Whois is an accessible online database that contains data identified with area name registrants, Website has and organizing associations. Whois database is something to be thankful for to an open since it is one component of keeping space proprietors responsible. ... The principle point of whois is to find and contact a Web Site.
 
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