DomainTools makes GoDaddy Private Whois useless....

[alien51]

I recently transferred a couple of domains to Godaddy. But since Godaddy no longer allows DomainTools to display whois data of Godaddy-registered domains, what DomainTools is now doing is displaying the whois information from the previous registrar of the domain.

As a result, if your Godaddy domain is shielded by private whois, DomainTools exposes those information to the world by displaying your whois from your previous registrar. So if you paid GoDaddy for private whois, DomainTools effectively renders your private whois useless.

 

[glaxxon]

Do you mean whois from previous registrar or a cached whois?
Either way, it is pretty bad as other people and potential buyers can be misled and will try to contact previous owners, whose whois may be displayed.

 

[alien51]

DomainTools displays:

"*We provide the most recent archived Whois record when important data has been withheld by the registrar."

DomainTools takes a snapshot of your exposed whois record while your domain is in the process of transferring to another registrar. If your destination registrar happens to be Godaddy (which witholds the data from DomainTools), DomainTools will instead publish the snapshot public whois data of your domain before the registrar transfer, eventhough your current domain is now under private whois at Godaddy.

 

[BeautifulDomainNames]

This should kill Godaddy's ability to sell private whois when buyers are transferring in.

 

[glaxxon]

This should kill Godaddy's ability to sell private whois when buyers are transferring in.

Hopefully that might stop them from with-holding whois details and stop trying to redirect people to their site.

 

[BeautifulDomainNames]

Hopefully that might stop them from with-holding whois details and stop trying to redirect people to their site.

I sure hope so glaxxon, this is rather petty for the #1 registrar. I'm considering moving all my names away; not because I'm greatly affected by this move but rather because I see it as such an ungenerous ploy.

Can you imagine how many people who would normally buy a domain that's registered at another registrar and have that name transferred in to godaddy, will no longer do so because of the risk of losing a sale due to the fact that the whois at DT and other whois sites will list the previous owner's whois details?

I know I will never move a newly bought name from another registrar in to Godaddy ever again as long as this ridiculous policy remains.

Stupid move Godaddy.


- Darlene

 

[carob]

The problem is not with Godaddy, it is with Domaintools wrongly harvesting Whois data and then in this case inaccurately reporting it.

You could just change the whois to Donald Duck and then do a search at Domaintools before the transfer, it will then store that data in the whois.

Why aren't people complaining about Domaintools?

 

[MeanerDomainer]

Domain Tools, the TOOLS of the domain world...

 

[Name Trader]

Here is GoDaddy's Whois ToS

The data contained in GoDaddy.com, Inc.'s WhoIs database,
while believed by the company to be reliable, is provided "as is"
with no guarantee or warranties regarding its accuracy. This
information is provided for the sole purpose of assisting you
in obtaining information about domain name registration records.
Any use of this data for any other purpose is expressly forbidden without the prior written
permission of GoDaddy.com, Inc. By submitting an inquiry,
you agree to these terms of usage and limitations of warranty. In particular,
you agree not to use this data to allow, enable, or otherwise make possible,
dissemination or collection of this data, in part or in its entirety, for any
purpose, such as the transmission of unsolicited advertising and
and solicitations of any kind, including spam. You further agree
not to use this data to enable high volume, automated or robotic electronic
processes designed to collect or compile this data for any purpose, including
mining this data for your own personal or commercial purposes.

DT have been doing this for years. It's about time GD took them to task over this.

 

[alien51]

Yes, i think DomainTools is being malicious here.

DomainTools is in the business of selling archived whois data. You have to be a premium "paying" member to view past archived whois record they collected. But now that Godaddy denied them access to the current whois data of a domain, they publish your whois data to the world "free of charge" -- eventhough at immediate glance, the whois data they are publishing is not accurate, and misleading.

DomainTools simply says that info you are seeing is "the most recent archived". It's a very misleading explanation. They are putting the domain owner to task as the collateral damage in its business conflict with Godaddy.

 

[junosama]

I heard having private registration can affect your SEO rankings. I also heard the same about how long a domain is registered for. Less years being worse.

 

[snicksnack]

if domainstools would pay $10,000 to GD they GD would have to give them bulk access to the whois data. However DT seems to be violating most of the whois terms and conditions.

"You are not authorized to access or query our Whois
database through the use of electronic processes that are high-volume and automated except as reasonably necessary to register domain names or
modify existing registrations; the Data in VeriSign Global Registry
Services' ("VeriSign") Whois database is provided by VeriSign for
information purposes only, and to assist persons in obtaining information about or related to a domain name registration record."

 

[BeautifulDomainNames]

Here is GoDaddy's Whois ToS


DT have been doing this for years. It's about time GD took them to task over this.

So has every other whois website that has ever existed. DT is at fault here and that's for being the first whois site to list what is most often outdated contact information, perhaps the others will follow, I can only hope not.



- Darlene

 

[cache]

This may be another potential income for DT:
1. domain tools should charge the domain owner some fees if the domain owner does not want the previous whois to be exposed +

2. collect money from those people who want to see the previous whois.

either way dt will make money.

 

[gpmgroup]

Listing out of date whois is irresponsible.

What happens if a women's refuge registers a domain name with their own details and then opts for privacy before the site goes live?

 

[Jotu]

In my opinion, DT business is totally sucky.
I really don't understand why some people are supporting them while what they do is illegal.
They are storing whois data (which is not allowed), and also they are archiving all registrants infos. So that's mean that anyone who register a domainname and put its real infos in the whois is listed in a database managed by a private company which is selling those infos to anyone!
Anyway everyone know how their services work but I think that nobody should accept the way this business is running.

People who check whois info should stop using whois.sc and use who.is (name.com whois site) which is much better in my opinion.

 

[procanic]

About Time something was done they are handing all the info to scammers you type your DN in google and top of the list is your name at domain tools and others just like them.

 

[MattheP]

So has every other whois website that has ever existed.

Wrong. DT is not ordinary whois service. It archives all whois changes and sells them for profit. Thanks to them, everyone can find out all domains you have under your name, all previous owners, all your email addresses etc.
Such whois crawling and indexing is against Godaddy TOS.

 

[BeautifulDomainNames]

Yeah, I guess you're right, I really wasn't thinking. I was just considering the harvesting of information done by all whois services and a little angry at the possibility of losing sales. Now that I think of it, this is actually a good thing that needed to be done.


- Dar

Wrong. DT is not ordinary whois service. It archives all whois changes and sells them for profit. Thanks to them, everyone can find out all domains you have under your name, all previous owners, all your email addresses etc.
Such whois crawling and indexing is against Godaddy TOS.

 

[alien51]

I really don't understand why some people are supporting them while what they do is illegal.

Perhaps what DomainTools is doing, may be legal.

For one, a domain's whois data is supposed to be for public consumption. If a registrar places proxy data on your whois, DomainTools captures those proxy data as your public info.

If it is public info, anyone can jot down those information on a piece of paper and store them for their own reference. DomainTools is like hiring a secretary to jot down the public info whois of all domains that ever existed. And these public info can be shared with others, like a public gallery or library.

Perhaps one way to really protect your privacy from being captured by DomainTools, is to change your whois data to false info about a week before you start transferring your domain to another registrar. Then restore the correct info after you have transferred and your private whois is up. The one week lead time is to prevent your registrar from delaying the transfer as they might suspect your domain is being hijacked and transferred out. I think i read somewhere that some registrars delay domain transfers when whois data was recently altered.

---------- Post added at 01:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:57 PM ----------

BTW:

I know some domainers don't care about private whois. But some of my domains are not for sale. They are private, and i want to keep them private. But i do transfer domains around, since transfers are cheaper than renewals.