WTF?! Phone Blowing Up After Hand Reggin'

WhoIs privacy is not the solution for domains you are trying to sell. And anyway once your number is out there reverting the WhoIs to privacy is not going to stop the spam calls.

If you are in the US, get a free GoogleVoice number and set it to do not disturb and use that for your WhoIs contact number. After setting it up it doesn’t even need to be connected to a valid number. Return calls that are important and use your computer for these outgoing calls. If you expect a really important call toggle do not disturb off and leave your computer on and logged in to GoogleVoice via gmail to answer the call.

If you want, notate all the spam calls as spam GV will block these in the future. GV also has the capability to block known spammers in advance using its own algorithm to analyze the call, if you toggle that feature.

Get a GV account and play with it a while you’ll see how powerful and useful it is. You may send and receive texts via it too. It’s only for people with a US landline or US cell though, but as noted once set up you may disconnect the real phone from the GV and use it as a VOIP via online only. Once disconnected from the real phone the GV do not disturb setting isn’t even necessary.

GV is the best VOIP I have found, and it’s free. To use it properly as an online VOIP you need to understand how it works but the above gives you a good introduction.

I have always been under the impression that if we use a phoney contact number, name or address when we register a domain, we could lose the domain, due to misrepresentation. That's the reason I use Whois Privacy through Namesilo (free).
Is there any truth to that?
Ps I wish we could publish ONLY our email on who is.

Provide a wrong phone number while registration. Or take a second number which is never used/switched off.

For sometime I started updating first unsolicited caller's number as contact numbers on other domains. So that all other spam calls are made to him and he gets the taste of his own soup. I felt at peace with this revenge

Wrong number is a bad idea. Providing any kind of false WhoIs information is grounds for losing the domain via ICANN.

I got a 1800 number from phone.com and the spams dropped significantly! Most spammers won’t even leave a voice mail and if they do it’s only 1 second. It is also good to get a second email address for the whois. Life is good now!

Internet.Domains said:

I know there is threads from the past on this subject, but this needs to be revisited.

I have been hand reggin' domains since 1999, there has always been some spam solicitor's calling here and there. Although, recently, I have regged some names and my phone is going off non-stop! NON STOP!!!! Just to make it clear, NON STOP!!!!

Does anyone have an answer to this?
Are there any solutions?
Is it happening to anyone else?
Do these spammers get any business from this practice?

Click to expand...

magicjack is $32 / year.
alternatively, Google voice is free, but requires that it's linked to a real phone number. You don't have to forward Gvoice to your rael phone... so basically, it becomes some kidn of black hole phone that you can check once in a while when you're bored ^_^.

Also, you can simply use a phone number of someone you hate :D like your high school principal? It's cool because it's not like ICANN requires your phone number for like domain verification or something? Or maybe they do? Does anyone know!

I'm sure there hasn't been a case (ok not sure) where someone used the phone # to steal a domain. Very nerdy james bond-ish

dotbay said:

I got a 1800 number from phone.com and the spams dropped significantly! Most spammers won’t even leave a voice mail and if they do it’s only 1 second. It is also good to get a second email address for the whois. Life is good now!

Click to expand...

I get some weird spam, where at 3 or 2 or 4 am, someone leaves a voicemail where all i hear is typing, and then some gruffy male voice, sometimes a clearing of the throat... and it's all very creepypasta... if i cared enough to pay attention

or, just have really long chats until they take you off their list.

I recommend to register your domains with domain registrar who provide whois protection service for free.

xynames said:

Wrong number is a bad idea. Providing any kind of false WhoIs information is grounds for losing the domain via ICANN.

Click to expand...

the idea is to get in touch with the owner when needed.
Email is correct and is the first point of contact for icann for any query on the domain. Practically icann cannot verify every contact on every domain.

It seems to come in waves for me at least. I object much more to phone calls, especially in middle of night, than email and wish ICANN allowed no phone number to be entered (or do they?).

I personally have gone the multiple phone number route with the one on whois with voicemail response only normally. Most leave no message and those that do I quickly deal with. It is possible I lose some domain calls from those who do not want to leave a message, but it was the only way to deal with the calls offering web services.

Most of my domain names are under privacy but it only takes one not for the number to get on a list that is sold to spammers.

Bob

stewmath said:

I get them for domains that have whois privacy on them, god knows how they get my number. I use dynadot and namesilo as my registrar

Click to expand...

How is it possible to get a phonecall, when the privacy is set on with their privacy phone number? Maybe that's worth investigating with Dynadot/NameSilo. Can you nail it down to 1 of those registrars? I don't get any phonecalls. Maybe because my underlying phone number is an answering service, with a recorded message I rarely have a domain registered at NameSilo. It's only ever because I bought the domain from somebody else.

OK. Re my last message and @Bob Hawkes message before that. I can think of a scenario where your phone number can leak out. If you have any domains at a Registry which doesn't allow privacy. ala .US, and you use the same phone number on your .US domains. Voila! Your phone number is toast. It will be passed around to all these spammers lists of valid phone numbers

I learned a lesson from my first domain I ever bought, it was in 2009, I was not in domaining business back then. Since 2009 (to this day) my email has been bombarded by spam on daily or even hourly basis because of that single domain!

Luckily I didn't use my main email when I registered that domain, I used an email that I rarely open.

So yes whois privacy is the only solution to avoid spam.