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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.
Yes, exactly right -- do that. However, many parking pages have no way of contacting the registrant indicated on their PPC landers.

I would comment about Ad blocking but I know you have been talking about that topic for years, e.g. here:

https://www.namepros.com/threads/ch...-15th-of-february.1065385/page-5#post-6578384

Yes, I remember that and parking pages have been decimated by adblockers.

That said though, whois is for the people in the domaining business. As stated by some of the posters here, the general public knows little about whois.

If you don't know how to make your own landers then there are a lot of marketplaces out there that will do the heavy lifting for you for a nominal fee.

Here is how simple it is to set up your own...

1. Get a cPanel web hosting plan
2. Make a one page landing site and call it index.html
3. Add any additional domains as alias domains in cPanel

Now whatever domain a client lands on they will see your lander and contact info. All the while the URL the client used is retained in the url bar.

So simple... you can expand by adding contact forms etc but all in all a few minor steps.

Now what displays on whois is no longer so relevant.
 
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many parking pages have no way of contacting the registrant indicated on their PPC landers.
It is possible to set very own Imprint at ParkingCrew and Bodis - so you may show your contact details easily.
If Contact/Sales form is not enough.
 
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This is easy...the man or woman or entity (business) that pays for the name should be the one and only one to decide whether info should show and what info that would be (catch all email, dedicated phone, etc).

Mandatory default should be 100% private for all registrations and the owner would have to make any changes that would make all or part of the info visible.
 
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And Organization field is always visible. GDPR doesn't hide it.
So if it is critical for you - put your email address into it.
 
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The registrant should have sovereign control seems to be clear poll result. I don't imagine this would be very difficult to implement for registrars .
 
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I was getting a ton of calls from people that wanted to develop my domains (i.e. phone spam), in some cases even minutes after registering a new domain. It went to absolutely 0 calls after GDPR. The best way to get legitimate offers is to make sure your domains point to sales pages.

I also created a custom privacy registrant contact using a dot CA domain because CIRA had very limited public WHOIS data similar to GDPR but emails were still going to me (just in case it was a sale inquiry). The public WHOIS said "Private Domain Name", or similar. And I even had phone calls from people asking to speak to "Private Domain Name". I would reply "Sorry, this is Public Domain Name". They then hung up.

Anyone interested in your domain will type it into the browser. I wonder how many end users even use WHOIS or know what it is.
 
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I was getting a ton of calls from people that wanted to develop my domains (i.e. phone spam), in some cases even after minutes from registering a new domain. It went to absolutely 0 calls after GDPR. The best way to get legitimate offers is to make sure your domains point to sales pages.

I also created a custom privacy registrant contact using a dot CA domain because CIRA had very limited public WHOIS data similar to GDPR but emails were still going to me (just in case it was a sale inquiry). The public WHOIS said "Private Domain Name", or similar. And I even had phone calls from people asking to speak to "Private Domain Name". I would reply "Sorry, this is Public Domain Name". They then hung up.

Anyone interested in your domain will type it into the browser. I wonder how many end users even use WHOIS or know what it is.

The challenge for most registries is that there is a requirement that the registrant must be a legal person or entity.

For example, for many you cannot say "Private Domain Name" as a person name, since it is not a registered business entity and not a legal person.

See ICANN:

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/approved-with-specs-2013-09-17-en#whois.1.4

The acceptable solution that works for ICANN and most regulators, is to use a privacy proxy which satisfies the legal entity requirement.

In the case of Anonymize.com, Epik's WHOIS privacy proxy service, it is free and it proxies an email address so you can be reached.

There is also a legal address, e.g. in case the entity need to be served with legal papers.

As for Donuts post-GDPR, this would of course moot since it is all redacted and the registrant's preferences are completely ignored.

In short, WHOIS remains a broken process. Domain landers are great, but in fact many inquiries from determined buyers do still come through WHOIS.
 
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The challenge for most registries is that there is a requirement that the registrant must be a legal person or entity.

For example, for many you cannot say "Private Domain Name" as a person name, since it is not a registered business entity and not a legal person.

See ICANN:

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/approved-with-specs-2013-09-17-en#whois.1.4

This is a discussion that is worth having. I have seen large domain investors using "Domain Administrator" as the registrant name. Even in the dot com.

When it comes to my post, CIRA does not make a lot of info public. So you can have your legal contact info kept private. That's why I chose the dot ca TLD for the privacy account that I used for my other domains' WHOIS. But I don't think it is needed anymore.

WHOIS should not be considered helpful for domain sales. The landing page is key. IMO.
 
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In short, WHOIS remains a broken process. Domain landers are great, but in fact many inquiries from determined buyers do still come through WHOIS.

Just to be clear. I do not want to contradict Rob's post. I just want to state that our experience is that more sales came from landing pages. This does not mean that sales also come through WHOIS. So both are tools that can be just as effective.
 
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I am fine with the whois privacy set by default due to my EU address, I don't have to pay for it. In my opinion, only spammers and in few cases a reseller-buyers go to whois to find out the owner. End user buyer simply go to the domain name itself to find out if the domain is active, and he or she lands on my sales page or try to dig it on a large marketplace. There is few registrars who does not set the privacy for your domain even your address is in the EU tho, maybe it's for certain extensions.
 
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Simple. Let those who register decide.

Also, to add, I am a citizen of the United States and the fact that legislation, such as GDPR, in another country effects my rights is very troubling.

GDPR doesn't affect your rights. It gives greater rights to the individuals who are citizens of the EU. So if you are a citizen of the US then GDPR will not affect your personal data, however, the rights of citizens of the EU will be preserved across geographical boundaries. Also GDPR gives power to the individual to decide how they want their data to be processed, stored and shared so actually it is a step in the right direction - moving away from autocratic tech giants and putting some of the power back in the people's hands.
 
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A lot of registries, including all of Donuts, hid the contact info of all registrants due to GDPR compliance concerns. It was probably excessive since most of their registrants were not EU citizens. However, that was their solution, and it is still in effect today. I don't believe this move was good for the sell-through of names to end-users.

That makes sense for them to do that but they should make opt-in very easy which I assume is not the case. All they need is a checkbox which by default is unchecked and explains that checking the box will show their contact details on WhoIs.
 
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GDPR doesn't affect your rights. It gives greater rights to the individuals who are citizens of the EU. So if you are a citizen of the US then GDPR will not affect your personal data, however, the rights of citizens of the EU will be preserved across geographical boundaries. Also GDPR gives power to the individual to decide how they want their data to be processed, stored and shared so actually it is a step in the right direction - moving away from autocratic tech giants and putting some of the power back in the people's hands.
The idea and thoughts behind GDPR is great. Privacy is more important than ever. However, like many monstrous legislation packages, GDPR does not do as intended. It has holes and gaps the technology companies use to their advantage. I only wish it tackled the real issues, such as privacy.

Beyond saying what I have said, I cordially decline to go into further details about GDPR.
 
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The REGISTRANT is paying the money and taking the privacy risk, so should also have full and absolute control of WHOIS visibility.
 
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You guys are all skating around the real issue, which is:

Impact of WHOIS on Domainers Buying Soon-to-Expire Premium Domains at Wholesale Prices.

That's the real gripe, as the end user looking to sell their domains has a cornucopia of options available, but WHOIS privacy limits domain investors from cold-calling "Russell Leblaine" to see if he "wants to sell Premium.com for pennies on the dollar, as it's expiring soon anyway".

Hoping to get...

"Oh yes, my husband Russell died last year and owned a pile of those stupid domains... "
 
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You guys are all skating around the real issue, which is:

Impact of WHOIS on Domainers Buying Soon-to-Expire Premium Domains at Wholesale Prices.

That's the real gripe, as the end user looking to sell their domains has a cornucopia of options available, but WHOIS privacy limits domain investors from cold-calling "Russell Leblaine" to see if he "wants to sell Premium.com for pennies on the dollar, as it's expiring soon anyway".

Hoping to get...

"Oh yes, my husband Russell died last year and owned a pile of those stupid domains... "

EXACTLY.

And for that widow, she is happy to sell that junk before she has to renew. True story.
 
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I would personally prefer a contact form with a decent CAPTCHA / Anti-spam feature, and no personally identifiable information.

That way I'm contactable for legal or sales reasons, but my information can't be harvested for robocalls, text blasts, and email spam.
 
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Thanks for the article and background @Rob Monster . I strongly agree with @DNWon that the registrant email should be public but nothing more. There are various legitimate reasons you might need to email a domain holder. I see no reason why home address and phone number should be public. I think that domain names for sale will generally have lander so agree with @Jurgen Wolf that very rarely do sales come via Whois.
Bob

Ps I voted that law should be able to override but I guess I am a lonely minority in thinking that!:xf.wink:

Why do you think an international body should be able to create a law to override your wish as the registrant Bob?
 
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Why do you think an international body should be able to create a law to override your wish as the registrant Bob?
I might well have misunderstood the meaning (since I seem such a minority:xf.wink:) but it just seems to me that a duly considered legal decision of a political entity is higher than my personal wish. In real property here at least records are public so you can trace historically ownership of a property. If it was decided digital assets should be similarly on public record I would accept that decision. if international law decided records needed to be public to mitigate criminal use of domains, I would accept that.
Bob
 
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All I see is yet another shakedown for more money with the threat of exposure. I get the emails but it doesn't apply to EU citizens so I am not paying extra after 20 days.

This option should be available. I don't need the GDPR to wrap me up in cotton wool.

1 checkbox and an input field.

Checkbox (Show this email address)
Input field (Editable: with default email address)
 
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I voted registrant should have control, but that is due to privacy, not if it is needed in a crime or official inquiry.
 
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BLOCK IT ALL! I am so tired of people contacting me.
 
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1. Proxy/Privacy protection would have done the job, which is mostly provided Free by domain registrars can relieve us from the Spammers (so called marketers).

2. Direct Sales and Offers were atleast double of what we get today. Because now we are dependent on the domain landing page or sales platforms. Let me know if there are others who feel the same pain.

The registrant should have sovereign control - I think letting the Domain Registrant have a control over his Whois settings is a much better option.

Thanks.
 
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Whois is a searchable online database that contains information related to domain name registrants, Website hosts and networking organizations. Whois database is a good thing to a public because it is one element of keeping domain owners accountable. ... The main aim of whois is to track down and contact a Web Site.




 
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