GoDaddy Might Be Making Your Inbound Inquiry Via WHOIS Impossible

jideofor · Nov 25, 2017

Has anybody noticed that contact details of domains at Godaddy are being deleted or non existing? If you have your domains at Godaddy and receive inbound inquiries for domains that you have at Godaddy, this might be killing your chances of receiving offers/inquiries.

For some time now, they have been on this scheme. First you can't view them when you use WHOIS.COM and then they went to further to make it impossible to see contact details when you use ICANN whois search.

Who else has taken note? I might be wrong or my computer is giving off false information but I would like to know if I am the only one experiencing this.

Kate · Nov 29, 2017

Joe Styler said:
I am just catching up from being away for a few days for Thanksgiving. We are testing things on port 43 not the web based lookup. We are definitely blocking info and this is not against ICANN rules. We have to support WHOIS on port 43 for other registrars to do things like transfer domains we do not have to make our WHOIS available to anyone who wants to mine it.

If I am not wrong registrars usually whitelist each other based on the basis of designated IP addresses.

I know that I may be in the minority, but I like the stricter whois policies of some ccTLD registries.
For example if you want to know the registrant of a .se domain you have to check on the Swedish registry website and fill out a captcha if you need to drill down the registrant details. That makes it impractical for spammers to mine the whois database. But if somebody needs to contact you for a good reason, they can.
When we register those ccTLDs we never get spam.

If the whois output says you need to check on Godaddy to get full registrant name I guess the other party should be able to figure that out. The problem though is when you use a third party website to check whois, for example Dynadot, and it returns nothing because it cannot connect to the Godaddy whois server. Then we have a problem. The problem is the lack of consistency.

Jasonn · Nov 29, 2017

Kate said:
If I am not wrong registrars usually whitelist each other based on the basis of designated IP addresses.

I know that I may be in the minority, but I like the stricter whois policies of some ccTLD registries.
For example if you want to know the registrant of a .se domain you have to check on the Swedish registry website and fill out a captcha if you need to drill down the registrant details. That makes it impractical for spammers to mine the whois database. But if somebody needs to contact you for a good reason, they can.
When we register those ccTLDs we never get spam.

If the whois output says you need to check on Godaddy to get full registrant name I guess the other party should be able to figure that out. The problem though is when you use a third party website to check whois, for example Dynadot, and it returns nothing because it cannot connect to the Godaddy whois server. Then we have a problem. The problem is the lack of consistency.

Yes, that is a problem and I wonder how many other registrars have the same problem, they just can't connect to godaddy so no link or info is shown at all.

also, unless someone has domains only at godaddy and nowhere else blocking whois for spammers won't make a difference as they'll just get it from one of the other registrars the person uses.

i don't mind a link where people are told to go there to look it up but the whole can't connect to godaddy issue is no good.

isn't the whois for .com and .net supposed to move to verisign soon anyways?

Joe Styler · Nov 29, 2017

sdom said:
Many people also will not be comfortable to have their info shown all over the place. Its nice to hear you are working towards reducing spam for domains without privacy. There are many who want complete privacy but staying out it because of high charges. Is there any scope for Godaddy to reduce privacy protection charges?

It is something we are looking at but nothing certain yet.

Joe Styler · Nov 29, 2017

Jasonn said:
Yes, that is a problem and I wonder how many other registrars have the same problem, they just can't connect to godaddy so no link or info is shown at all.

also, unless someone has domains only at godaddy and nowhere else blocking whois for spammers won't make a difference as they'll just get it from one of the other registrars the person uses.

i don't mind a link where people are told to go there to look it up but the whole can't connect to godaddy issue is no good.

isn't the whois for .com and .net supposed to move to verisign soon anyways?

WHOIS changes are coming overall. How so I do not think is 100% nailed down yet but there are things ICANN is actively discussing such as new European data privacy laws. I would keep my eyes on the blogs and industry news and see what happens as it unfolds. Here's an article a European Registrar wrote in September about that law, https://www.ovh.ie/news/articles/a2535.whois-at-risk-gdpr-discussion-with-afnic. I am not sure what will happen yet beyond changes seem inevitable. If you do not use a for sale landing page for your domains you should look into that with one of the services like Afternic

Joe Styler · Nov 29, 2017

Jasonn said:
Yes, that is a problem and I wonder how many other registrars have the same problem, they just can't connect to godaddy so no link or info is shown at all.

also, unless someone has domains only at godaddy and nowhere else blocking whois for spammers won't make a difference as they'll just get it from one of the other registrars the person uses.

i don't mind a link where people are told to go there to look it up but the whole can't connect to godaddy issue is no good.

isn't the whois for .com and .net supposed to move to verisign soon anyways?

They can contact us about it, it is normally something we can work out with them easily and they may not have things configured to work correctly. I just helped with getting another registrar set up correctly this week. We are pretty easy to work with for other registrars, but we can only help them fix what they tell us is not working.

Jasonn · Nov 29, 2017

Joe Styler said:
WHOIS changes are coming overall. How so I do not think is 100% nailed down yet but there are things ICANN is actively discussing such as new European data privacy laws. I would keep my eyes on the blogs and industry news and see what happens as it unfolds. Here's an article a European Registrar wrote in September about that law, https://www.ovh.ie/news/articles/a2535.whois-at-risk-gdpr-discussion-with-afnic. I am not sure what will happen yet beyond changes seem inevitable. If you do not use a for sale landing page for your domains you should look into that with one of the services like Afternic

Yes, I am aware of these changes however I was referring to the switch to thick whois which I thought was supposed to happen fairly soon. These euro privacy laws I find fairly ridiculous. People should be able to pick a registrar that offers free or cheap privacy protection if they need it.

I know with .ca domains the whois is blocked by default but there is also the option to opt out of this block. Personally I have opted out of the block so all my info shows up. That kind of option should exist on any kind of forced privacy protection. Not to mention this is a european law...why should the rest of the world have to change to accommodate them? use a european registrar if you want that.

Then there is RDAP, the Registration Data Access Protocol which is a whole other can of worms...personally i think things are fine as is. i own lots of domains and get 10-15 spams a day but i don't see the big deal. delete and move on.

wwwweb · Nov 29, 2017

Had issues with a transfer as it was coming up as ******* for the email? They had to manually go, and input it at the register level.

sofiapartner · Nov 29, 2017

I left godaddy and don't care about them. Poor support, very expensive, not user-friendly site, always trying to sell you something additional... ughh... so happy that I am not there anymore.

xynames · Nov 29, 2017

Does this issue have to do with running the WhoIs of a domain registered at GDiddy or with running the WhoIs of any domain on the GD site?

In general I find that GD isn’t the best website to use for WhoIs checks but when I just now ran WhoIs on Domaintools for one of my GD registered domains I did get full WhoIs info although it is cached - from five months ago.

I tried it at Domaintools for another domain of mine at GD that I acquired a month ago, and the WhoIs is cached from October 23rd - just prior to when I acquired it so it reflects the prior owner’s info.

So it does seem that GD is releasing WhoIs info to other registrars but not real time. This may be the issue - that GD is not releasing real time WhoIs info on its domains to other registrars.

When I ran the WhoIs for the above two domains at the GoDaddy WhoIs website itself, the WhoIs info came back fine, correct and current.

ResoluteDomains · Jan 13, 2018

jideofor said:
Has anybody noticed that contact details of domains at Godaddy are being deleted or non existing? If you have your domains at Godaddy and receive inbound inquiries for domains that you have at Godaddy, this might be killing your chances of receiving offers/inquiries.

For some time now, they have been on this scheme. First you can't view them when you use WHOIS.COM and then they went to further to make it impossible to see contact details when you use ICANN whois search.

Who else has taken note? I might be wrong or my computer is giving off false information but I would like to know if I am the only one experiencing this.

With the craziness of the holidays, and my life in general, I seem to have missed this. Yes, I have been commenting about this for many months. 1/2 of my domains suddenly have almost no WHOIS info. The .IO registry owners who took over earlier 2017 have done similar.

Inbound inquiries crashed. I hate the spam but in there were legit offers AND sales were made from there. Now, NO inbound offers on those WHOIS-limited domains I own. Thats for posting this, thought it was just my names and since there is no way for me to contact GoDaddy these days (telephone and chat are not an option for me), I just figured I'd leave it be.

Joe Styler · Jan 16, 2018

This post I did on GoDaddy's community help pages explains the changes and how to opt out if you do not want your whois info to be limited on port 43 automated lookups. https://www.godaddy.com/Domain-Investing/Whois-Masking-what-is-changing/td-p/88329

ResoluteDomains · Jan 16, 2018

Joe Styler said:
This post I did on GoDaddy's community help pages explains the changes and how to opt out if you do not want your whois info to be limited on port 43 automated lookups. https://www.godaddy.com/Domain-Investing/Whois-Masking-what-is-changing/td-p/88329

getting a not-found type of page
"Whoops! Looks like you're lost. Maybe you were typing too fast. Or maybe we moved the page you were looking for (sorry about that). Whatever happened, there’s nothing to see here. Try one of the links below to get back on track."

Joe Styler · Jan 16, 2018

I answered you in the other thread on this. https://www.godaddy.com/Domain-Investing/Whois-Masking-what-is-changing/td-p/88329

NamesMax · Jan 16, 2018

Still a broken link @Joe Styler.

I had a large portfolio at GD and moved most of them away. I was down to 70 or so names with you. Act. Rep. Rob Hardwick convinced me to come back. In the fall I moved about 500 names back to GD. When my Efty software could not even pull the whois to update my names and I had to do it manually, my transfers back stopped.

This has been Epik.com's gain. A 42 cents more for transfers, but my time is worth a lot more than that.

Joe Styler · Jan 16, 2018

NamesMax said:
Still a broken link @Joe Styler.

I had a large portfolio at GD and moved most of them away. I was down to 70 or so names with you. Act. Rep. Rob Hardwick convinced me to come back. In the fall I moved about 500 names back to GD. When my Efty software could not even pull the whois to update my names and I had to do it manually, my transfers back stopped.

This has been Epik.com's gain. A 42 cents more for transfers, but my time is worth a lot more than that.

Rob should be able to help you with any bulk changes on our end that you need to make.

NamesMax · Jan 18, 2018

Joe Styler said:
Rob should be able to help you with any bulk changes on our end that you need to make.

He did the bulk changes for me at Go Daddy, Joe. It is the bulk changes in getting the whois info into Efty.com. They only see what is in the cached whois file. Thus they have no availability to even see that this name was just transfered to GD nor see its new expiration date. Rob has been great to work with. If not for him, those 500 names would not have Sen my Go Daddy account, but he doesn't get access to my Efty account. Thus your whois policy is prohibiting sales coming from me.

Oh and I do eventually get spam calls from my GD names. It seems to me, from my vantage point, that this policy has got to be hurting and not helping your revenues

tonyk2000 · Jan 18, 2018

It is good policy but in fact would not and can not eliminate spam calls and e-mails. There are already "work at home" programs that are promoted on "make money easy" websites where members (mostly from low GDP countries) are decoding captchas, for the purposes of spamming forums and guestbooks. They are paid very little but it still works. Within <1 month after Jan. 25th, our Indian "friends" who are calling/emailing each new registration with dozens of solicitations will add GoDaddy alternative web-based whois parcing to these programs. So, if we think about it, with current and new port43 restrictions, GoDaddy is - in fact - in position of Don Quixote (the battle with the windmills).

GoDaddy Might Be Making Your Inbound Inquiry Via WHOIS Impossible

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