Finalizing search for Universal WHOIS brand name - WhoQ.com

[Rob Monster]

I previously announced a search for a brand name for a universal WHOIS.

In the meantime, we have some finalist names. I could use some help selecting a winner for a new global WHOIS search tool that will support both conventional domains and Blockchain domains.

In full disclosure, Epik.com is the buyer for this domain. The solution will address one of the great industry challenges of having WHOIS info hidden due to GDPR compliance making it hard to reach the registrant.

See example:

 

[wwwweb]

You would be amazed how many "domain investors" have non-resolving domains with no working WHOIS. As an active buyer's agent, we know this first-hand.

Constructive input is always welcome even if the input is challenging the value proposition. Rhetorical devils advocate grandstanding, not so much.

Yes, there are scenarios for every situation, and domain. Maybe you don’t like to see Godaddy afternic become a retail powerhouse, and it’s hard to compete against all their marketing.

You are going to do what you are going to do, this is a forum, and people are going to speak their mind, and we can only work with what we know, and what we have seen in the past.

I understand you are a businessman, and you are trying to build something of value, and I applaud you for that.

This has gone sideways, not what I intended, but hopefully you prove me wrong, I just don’t see a need for it, God bless.

 

[namemarket]

his is about creating community around repairing the breaches being created by GDPR and ham-fisted policy enforcement from those who are destroying end-user domain sales by making it impossible to contact the domain owner......

I fully agree. With me it's made a huge difference. For many years I believe the majority of my email and phone call inquiries came via Whois. Since whois was redacted last year inquiries (and sales) are down big time. Such a big decline I am letting tons of names expire or non-renew status which I was not anticipating doing in the past.

What's ironic about it is still getting about same amount of spams. Probably somewhat less from those selling SEO service and site building (mostly in India I believe) however l still get them sent from what looks like old historical Whois data bases. And the number of spams I get saying they own keyword1keyword2.net and since I have keyword1keyword2.com do I want to buy the ,net actually seems to be on the increase.

 

[Rob Monster]

I fully agree. With me it's made a huge difference. For many years I believe the majority of my email and phone call inquiries came via Whois. Since whois was redacted last year inquiries (and sales) are down big time. Such a big decline I am letting tons of names expire or non-renew status which I was not anticipating doing in the past.

What's ironic about it is still getting about same amount of spams. Probably somewhat less from those selling SEO service and site building (mostly in India I believe) however l still get them sent from what looks like old historical Whois data bases. And the number of spams I get saying they own keyword1keyword2.net and since I have keyword1keyword2.com do I want to buy the ,net actually seems to be on the increase.

This is what many folks have observed. I am not going to claim there is a conspiracy, but I struggle to understand why any registry or registrar interested in helping registrants would go out of their way to make it impossible to contact a registrant without setting up a landing page -- one controlled by a 3rd party.

 

[offthehandle]

I have ample anecdotal evidence that end-user sales are down. I believe WHOIS friction is a key contributing factor.

I like the idea you are creating this service and would use it if it has more data than Whoxy and Archive to determine past registration history and usage. Years ago Domain tools was free, so stopped using it when they charged as I don’t need the info enough. But I am abit puzzled about this statement. In all my years on the web since 1995 (but not in domaining), I have rarely bumped into an everyday business owner person, even corporate IT type people who even know what the heck WHOIS is. Can you give some examples without naming names? The primary WHOIS audience I thought were Domain name lawyers, TM protection, and domain investors and a few scattered people around. Afaik, the average business person has no idea what it is.

I don’t deal with silicon valley tech or VC people so maybe those are the end user people who you refer to and are missing out. Most people only know of Godaddy due to their advertising, the rest of the industry are really pretty obscured.

I get these fake inquiries from brokers and domainers trying to disguise themselves as end users, its really annoying. And SEO and App spammers even though most all my domains are under privacy by choice to avoid the spam.

What I sure would like to see someday is a open large marketplace where end users could hunt down legacy DOT net, org and com Names for their business, and not be barraged with goofy new gtld’s like Godday does and others trying to distract end users to sell other extensions. A searchable database of opt in domain sellers inventories. The problem with Undeveloped, Above, Efty is no SEO value added is their problem, I would like to see something like the SEO and system like Brandbucket has, except they have high commissions and rigged their search to favor certain sellers. Glad to see you participate on this forum.

 

[namemarket]

The primary WHOIS audience I thought were Domain name lawyers, TM protection, and domain investors and a few scattered people around. Afaik, the average business person has no idea what it is....

In my opinion and experience that is not at all valid or correct as the majority of my end-user sale inquiries over many years came via Whois lookups. I am also sure a lot of average business people know about Godaddy, which then leads to a whois search being done. End users I refer to are real and not disguised as you say.

 

[offthehandle]

In my opinion and experience that is not at all valid or correct as the majority of my end-user sale inquiries over many years came via Whois lookups. I am also sure a lot of average business people know about Godaddy, which then leads to a whois search being done. End users I refer to are real and not disguised as you say.

So my opinion in invalid? Whatever, we all have different experiences.
What industry are these end users in? I would imagine web developers or web app people. Are any they IT people with corporate? Say in publishing? I imagine all are techies.

I even had one major well known knucklehead broker on this forum attempt to do that trick even who do that with phony email address and I am not going to embarass them, then even worse at final attempt they even got some neophyte godaddy brokers contacted me trying to offer $100 on a high end domain, I was barraged since whois published. I told them all the price was clearly listed and no reason to contact me unless close to that price. The only reason for the emails were whipping post b.s., I have been in business for more years than most here and can see through it.

 

[offthehandle]

Totally invalid. Right Namemarker.

Here is some actual data from a Domain blog just published coincidently, although only one source (Tucows) and a small sampling sorta seems to support my previous “invalid” statement.

“Tucows said its data shows that 92% of the disclosure requests it has received so far come from “commercial interests”, mostly either trademark or copyright owners.

Of this 92%, 85% were identified as trademark interests, and 76% of those were Facebook.

Law enforcement accounted for 2% of requests, and security researchers 1%, Tucows said.”

http://domainincite.com/23932-surprise-most-private-whois-look-ups-come-from-facebook

 

[namemarket]

I apologize if I used some words which made you mad.

I'm not familiar with the term however I believe so called 'private whois lokup requests' are not the same and often done for different reasons and circumstances using another process vs old regular whois lookups the public was doing before redaction so if I am right on that the quoted stats would appear to not be applicable to this thread.

Maybe those more expert on it than me can chime-in like Rob Monster?

 

[offthehandle]

Apology accepted.

So far the idea of a database whoQ being developed is great. I have no objection to it, that is *if* being included in it is completely voluntary. And not scraped data off and against the purpose of GDRP. The jerk SEO scraper leeches of data like Moz, Ahrefs, Majestic, and other unwanted companies on the internet disgust me. The bots that use my bandwidth up and scrape my data, I block them and entire countries but they just switch proxies. I get unwanted listings from “alterative whois services” not in registry control. I get unwanted tracking backlinks too from bots and whois services tracking current nameservers, ip’s, etc. The emails keep coming from wherever the origin that these spammers continue to use. This past weeks emails were slow, I havent bought any names, but soon as I registered a few names all under privacy, the sneaky ones spam me. I have no specific idea how they find out the email address. Whois should have always been provided as opt in only from day one. I have a big problem with public whois. I have also had sites ruined with negative SEO, not sure how competitors found out about new sites sometimes. Seems to me Whois is the origin of this problem.

 

[Rob Monster]

For cases where the domain data is not authoritatively deposited by the registry or registrar, or has not been verifiably claimed by the registrant, the system will simply display what comes from the authoritative WHOIS associated with the domain.

As for historical WHOIS, this is a tough one. I know where to source the data and would love to display it for free, but the concern there is GDPR compliance which is why we'll keep that data at arms length rather than display it on an Epik-operated site. The downside is too great.

The real thing we are solving for here is liquidity, i.e. how do we connect buyer and seller without forcing going through a marketplace, and without being subjected to endless spam from WHOIS scrapers.

The other thing we are solving here is that virtual domains and Blockchain domains are now a real thing, and they too will have a viable after-market that requires efficient authoritative ownership verification.

For awareness, already from this week, Epik.com customers will be able to manage virtual domains and Blockchain domains right from their Epik control panel, including buy, manage, sell and lease. Already now all Blockchain domains are fully resolving in the Anonymize DNS resolver or Anonymize VPN.

I do sincerely hope that the development of WhoQ.com as an open framework will bless the industry. I have a lot of confidence in @NickLim and @Sufyan Alani who are leading the development and operational implementation in the weekend leading up to ICANN 64. For those not aware, Nick is the Founder of BitMitigate.com, and is now CTO. Sufyan came out of 101 Domains and is an ICANN veteran.

Finally, it is worth noting that the ICANN-led initiative is in a bit of disarray with Kurt Pritz stepping down as the policy chair. I would surely like to know if he was forced out in order to make way for a table-pounding project leader who will fast-track a solution. Whoever it is, I have asked Sufyan to reach out to the stakeholders, and to proactively work with them for the benefit of the industry.

 

[LaunchUp.com]

Regy is the best name out the bunch...but at the same time I don't think whois search when i hear it. Sounds like a possible registrar lol

I like the idea of something with Q

How about NamesQ.com ?

 

[Rob Monster]

Regy is the best name out the bunch...but at the same time I don't think whois search when i hear it. Sounds like a possible registrar lol

I like the idea of something with Q

How about NamesQ.com ?

Thanks Rory.

WhoQ.com actually won the poll so we went with it. Short, starts with "Who" and is reasonably brandable. We bought it here on NamePros from @Nem0.

 

[stav]

i think using Q as a magnifying glass which is the universal search icon will be nice

whoQ .com

 

[Rob Monster]

i think using Q as a magnifying glass which is the universal search icon will be nice

whoQ .com

We tested some logo concepts.

The leaders were A4 and A1.

A1 is your magnifier concept but the harder was harder to read.

The project is coming along and we'll be reviewing it with registry stakeholders at ICANN next week with @NickLim and @Sufyan Alani.

 

[Mister Funsky]

The leaders were A4 and A1

Best wishes to you on the new project!

I like the logo on A1 the best but maybe move the mag glass off of the 'o' a bit. I can see a moving graphic on the landing page with the glass moving over all of the letters causing them to enlarge and/or show data as it move across.

Btw, thanks for the added security on epik...quantum computers are going to give us all more grief (as far as keeping data secure) in the near future.

 

[Rob Monster]

Best wishes to you on the new project!

I like the logo on A1 the best but maybe move the mag glass off of the 'o' a bit. I can see a moving graphic on the landing page with the glass moving over all of the letters causing them to enlarge and/or show data as it move across.

Btw, thanks for the added security on epik...quantum computers are going to give us all more grief (as far as keeping data secure) in the near future.

Thanks Funsky.

On the logo, we may go with A1 -- the poll results were close to a tie but seasoned domainers seem to like the magnifying glass theme.

As for security, in case not aware already, here is a good place to start for comprehensive security:

https://anonymize.com/vpn/

It uses AES-256 encryption, which is quantum-resistant.

Epik has a lot of security features and is, I believe the only supplier that can single-vendor supply from its own verified source, all of these:

• Domain name (Epik)
• Distributed DNS with DNSSEC (Epik / BitMitigate)
• Host (Epik)
• 4096-bit SSL (BitMitigate)
• Content Delivery Network (BitMitigate)
• DDoS Protection (BitMitigate)
• WHOIS Obfuscaction and social engineering prevention (Anonymize)
• VPN (Anonymize)

Most people likely did not notice that but it really is the full stack. We can even resolve Blockchain domains in 90 ms -- install the Anonymize.com VPN and then pull up any Blockchain domain or Alt-Domain. Folks can also buy Alt-Domains like .IPFS and .TRUTH at Epik and they resolve instantly. With WhoQ, the Blockchain domains and Alt-Domains will have verified ownership records and opt-in chain of title.

 

[EbookLover]

So is this new site supposed to retrieve contact info for GDRP redacted and Whois protected domains?

 

[Rob Monster]

So is this new site supposed to retrieve contact info for GDRP redacted and Whois protected domains?

It will allow verified owners of domains to set policy on how their contact details can be seen and how they can be contacted. We have it mostly built and will be meeting with stakeholders at ICANN in Kobe to review their input prior to putting it live. Some registries and registrars may choose to WhoQ.com as "Whois as a service" and in this case they are indemnified with regards to GDPR compliance since WhoQ manages the record keeping of when registrants opt in to have their data visible. Many registrars and registries simply hide everything because they are scared of compliance breaches however, in the process they have done great damage to the domain aftermarket.

 

[dombastic]

I'm aware that in most cases that whois details are hidden due to GDRP in the whois, but can one opt in again if they want their details to be public?

GDPR only affects registrants who are EU residents, not EU companies or non-EU residents.

 

[Rob Monster]

GDPR only affects registrants who are EU residents, not EU companies or non-EU residents.

Incorrect -- registries like Donuts hid all the data for all their registries for everyone.

See example:

https://whois.epik.com/acapulco.city

Registrant has no option to expose their contact info -- not even a privacy proxy email. That sucks.