Freemarket is spamming Flippa's failures

[Joseph Green]

Freemarket.com is sending spam to members of Flippa.com who have failed to sell their domains on Flippa.

Subject: No luck selling example.com? Sell on Freemarket with 1 click!
Body: Hello,

My name is Stefan Hogan and I run Freemarket.com, an online marketplace helping millions of entrepreneurs buy and sell websites online. I saw that your listing did not sell on Flippa. I would love to help you make money by selling it on Freemarket.

We beat Flippa by offering:

• Zero Listing Fee
• Low 5% Commission Rates
• Secure Handover With No Extra Fees

Example.com is ready to go! Simply click the button below, and we'll import your listing details from Flippa and make it available for buyers.

[Sell Your Listing With 1 Click]


Regards,

Stefan Hogan
Product Manager, Freemarket.com
Email: [email protected]

Why do some companies think it's okay to send unsolicited email to the registrant on WHOIS records? It's completely unacceptable and an abuse of the system.

Please put a stop to this practice immediately. Freemarket has violated CAN-SPAM laws and the WHOIS terms of use:

By submitting a Whois query, you agree to abide
by the following terms of use: You agree that you may use this Data only
for lawful purposes and that under no circumstances will you use this Data
to: (1) allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission of mass
unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations via e-mail, telephone,
or facsimile

Freemarket.com is owned by Freelancer.com so I expect more from a reputable company.

I receive enough spam as it is from dishonorable companies abusing the WHOIS database. The last thing we need is big companies adding to the problem.

Warning about Freemarket: View Thread.


@Stefan Hogan
@FlippaDomains

 

[iowadawg]

WOW!~!!
They are doing just what every domainer does!!!!
ANd you say it is spam and wrong?

 

[N-A]

There is a fine line that may have been crossed here.

What does this mean to B2B Marketers? It means that the law of the land is opt-out, not opt-in!

This is simply not the case - CAN-SPAM does not prohibit the sending of unsolicited email for commercial purposes - what it does require is that companies stop sending email to recipients who have said they no longer wish to receive it (opt OUT).

However, they are gathering the email addresses by scraping the whois record of the domain name.

(1) allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission of mass
unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations via e-mail, telephone,
or facsimile

How Freemarket is doing it is abiding by CAN-SPAM, but breaking the policy of ICANN (or whichever agency made it).

A lot of domainers have found end users by reaching out to the owner of the lesser quality domain names, but in most cases tailoring it to that company and also sending to any other person related to that company which will read their message to buy the domain name in question. Is that mass solicitation as well when adding [email protected] along with the administrator on record? Those are 2 emails sent then. There is no real definition or number for mass, so if 2 emails are sent to a company of 4 people, is that mass solicitation?

This is one method to sell domains, as seen in many threads, ebooks and blogs. Spoken from the mouths of the best of the best as well.

A simple fix to this: remove domain contact information from public whois.

However, some domainers want their info public so that they can be contacted from a buyer, but complain when it's a seller. I on the other hand keep privacy on all domains I can, so I know that when I receive an email, it is coming from scraped info as they're sending it to the @privacy-link.com email. That B2B contact is something in which I can respond to or not. Responding to such breaks the privacy as it comes to my email (I've suggested to @Sevan that there should be a system in place to reply through the same @privacy-link.com email).

So, the real problem lies with domain owners not enforcing the removal of contact information from the whois record, as you can still receive spam under privacy.

The line they crossed is mass unsolicited emails, but then again, what constitutes mass? One a day? Ten thousand a day? One hundred thousand a day?

Other than that, it's been preached by many to contact the person on the whois record as one method of contact. Now, more and more are leaning towards social networks. I have gotten unsolicited messages over Facebook for domain names because they've figured out some are mine (how, I don't know).

With regards to ccTLD's such as .US, Neustar requires privacy to be lifted. So, I had to comply with them and lift the privacy on those domains.

So, who is in the right and who is in the wrong? Prominent domainers who taught this method, or people continuing to use it (and teach it)?

How can Freemarket be in the wrong? I've gotten an unsolicited email from Rookmedia, but that was probably because I agreed to terms of being emailed to the email on another forum. I however took them up on their invitation and joined. Had I not received that email, I wouldn't have known about a parking platform.

It's not just Freemarket doing this, it's all of us. The buck stops when the laws or policies are modified though (which would anger some as they can't be easily contacted anymore).

 

[Eric Lyon]

My personal opinion is that it's more of an "Ethics" issue than anything else. Whilst it's unprofessional and unethical to harvest email addresses from a marketplace for the sole purpose of a targeted email campaign that directly engages customers of said marketplace to intentionally get them to switch marketplaces, it's not technically illegal or breaks any federal laws.

From what I understand, the domains that didn't sell were actually harvested in a data list and then whois for said domains was filtered and sorted for emails to contact the owners of each related domain.

Data harvesting / lead generation techniques such as this have been used by Telemarketers trying to convince us to switch our phone service providers for over 2 decades. The email addresses (as others pointed out) are publicly available via whois on most domains, minus ones with privacy settings. Looking more at "Ethics", many would agree that it's ethical to use whois information to contact potential end users, whilst others may still consider it a violation of the CAN-SPAM act.

We can argue the federal CAN-SPAM act all day which would flag not only this unethical email campaign, but also domain reseller campaigns looking for end users. The CAN-SPAM act blankets all email communication that is unsolicited, plays no favorites, and takes no prisoners.

Ethical or unethical, that is the real question IMO. - I Vote for "Unethical".

Potential Solution: Scripted Bot / Harvesting protection. Basically a script that can detect harvesters gathering data (In particular: Contact / Domain data) on a site and auto block them. This at least makes it harder to build large lists fast and forces them to manually extract each one.

 

[tomcarl]

I'm sure with the fraction of time to post this, you could've responded with 3 words "remove from list" and I doubt you'd ever get another single email again.

With the dozens of emails probably in your spam folder (like mine) for SEO services, website design, etc, you call for the pitchforks on a legitimate company offering to list your domain for sale for free? I'd get more upset about the other valueless [email protected] offers. Can understand your frustration, no one likes spam, but I sold a couple of names on FreeMarket, the offer actually has value imo.

 

[ResoluteDomains]

So you want to endorse this behavior?

What behavior? They've identified a market (non-wining auctions) and they're trying to tap into it. Its actually pretty clever. They're not trying to sell you something, they're trying to help you sell something that you could not.

If you have ever moved within the United States (dont know where you are), you receive dozens of what we all call "junk" mailings offering all sorts of services like garage door repair, carpet cleaning, lawn services, roofing, siding repairs, painting... you name it. Its business, pure and simple. These people have identified a market (recent movers) and are trying to sell services to them.

 

[tomcarl]

No, but I don't endorse ignorance.

You talk as if nearly every marketplace doesn't have Brokers that practice sending cold emails and making phone calls, yet you single out just one company (for whatever reason) in your call-to-action rant, meanwhile it's no secret that nearly every professional in this industry makes outbound contacts regarding propositions, acquisitions, etc.

Right now if you inquire about a broker on any domain marketplace for one of your domains, you don't think any of them are sending emails?

I support people in my industry and people who contact me regarding domains or offers that may be beneficial to me and are relating to what I do and I don't look for reasons to single-out anyone without giving them the opportunity to refrain from contacting me further.

But that's just me.

 

[tomcarl]

@Joseph Green

You may not endorse it, but you sure are preaching it.

Preaching? No, simply stating the facts.

I have thousands of domains, and Freemarket is the first notable company to send me unsolicited email. If Flippa, Sedo, Aftermarket, Bido, Afternic, DNX, GoDaddy, or any other well-known domain company spammed me to use their services, I would report them as well.

And a member of NP since 2007. You've never sent a single (1) email to anyone regarding any of your thousands of domains in 8 years? And if you haven't - Have you ever hired broker?

Are you calling all brokers and professionals in this industry who send emails spammers?

Are you calling every company that has a broker that sends an unsolicited email about a domain an endorser of spam?

 

[RU]

I hate emails from domainers selling crap domains, much more crappy than mine.

 

[RogueWriter]

Eh, my only experience with freemarket left me with a desire to never see or hear from them again. As far as this thread goes, I think Eric covered it pretty well in his response.

 

[DU]

Not really though.
A general domainer may attempt to contact a specific person regarding a potential sale with a particular name. This being targeted and limited. Freemarket have sent probably thousands of emails to flippa sellers who have failed selling a name on a service, trying to sell their own service. There is a massive difference imo.

I would say that Freemarket is MORE targeted than most domainers. They identified a person who tried to sell something and offered to do a better job when that effort failed. Do domainers know the people they contact are in the market for anything? Not usually.

But another every one spams except us ethical non-spamming domainer's rose-tinted view of the domaining world thread.

 

[Joseph Green]

So you want to endorse this behavior?

If so, then it wouldn't take long before we had thousands of these emails in our inbox from large companies. Then, we'll have to spend all day replying with "remove me from your list" or clicking "Unsubscribe" links. I don't know about you, but I have better things to do with my time. I rather my inbox not be flooded with unsolicited emails.

We shouldn't have to unsubscribe from something that we never subscribed to in the first place.

 

[jamesosix]

I hate large corporations sending me emails when I'm not even on their mailing list.

 

[Joseph Green]

After further research, I recommend that you avoid Freemarket:

https://www.namepros.com/threads/domain-sale-freemarket-com-help.843379/

 

[iowadawg]

Spam to one is legit to another.
End of story.

 

[DU]

If that's the case, let's call out everyone for unsolicited messages.
[edit]
I probably agreed to being spammed as well. Who knows. Who actually reads a 10 page ToS?

I doubt that Rakutan is sending spam- they probably are taking advantage of partnership agreements. These establish a "business relationship" which 3rd Parties which is then a whole new set of rules. They will also fulfill all the opt-out requirements.

There are laws for that in the US that are basically opt-out. In Europe and Japan it's stricter as opt-in (I think, I just looked up Japan )

 

[N-A]

So I can't criticise for emails received, and I'm surprised David Walker has named/criticised a domainer who has sent emails to him trying to sell a domain. I thought all domainers did this?

The list was to point out the hypocrisy of what we're doing as a whole, by putting actual "spammers" as individuals up to paint a clearer picture.

The list has been edited out because I don't want anyone to think that I dimed them out for spamming, when I wholeheartedly agree that it's not spamming, but domaining as you stated.

Where Freemarket would cross the line is if they sent an email to the the email on the domain name that didn't sell. I believe that would be spamming, even though it's targeting a specific domain. It's not targeting a specific domain owner, so you could expect 1 for each failed auction to the email on that whois. The OP didn't clarify which account it went to. (Still B2B, but feel this way is more impersonal)

Now if Freemarket took the time to scrape the domain from your Flippa public profile after seeing that you failed to sell a name and contact the whois email (or acquire it manually and compile a list of Flippa users/emails for B2B contacts) on the domain which is listed as the company about the domain that failed to sell at auction, I don't believe that would be considered spam. It's to the domain owner or broker at that point (as we all know some domains are owned by others, and brokered on Flippa-the first one may annoy the wrong person). This way, the seller receives the email and an offer of a 1-click, free free listing at low commission to try again. It's a good marketing strategy and I don't believe that crosses the line of being spam as it is a B2B contact. If this paragraph gave you motivation to go out there and contact domain owners yourself to broker it and you successfully sell it, congratulations, you're a domainer/broker--at least you're doing something proactive.

However, if this was on a mass campaign, as @Joseph Green pointed out, they did fail to do two things: clearly state that it is advertisement and provide an opt-out method (as well as the physical location of the company, but come on...). With that being mentioned, did you ever opt-in and are you going to receive another email? It's a fine line that can be argued as we as domainers have to comply with this as well, and for the most part, don't. We just strike them off the list if they don't respond, rather than bombard them. Clicking the link, you're opting in to their services and can receive whatever you want after-which. If you ignore the email, are you automatically unsubscribed? Those are questions that Freemarket would have to answer. If they are merely sending one email per failed auction and after 1 or 2 attempts to the seller they don't click the link, if they are striking them off the list, what differentiates what they did from what we do as a whole?

As far as Rakuten, that could have been through a partner agreement which I opted-in to through the registrar or even email account (there were just 3 in a row, so I threw them up in there) as @defaultuser pointed out.

I have to clarify my previous statement:

Nobody has this email address except this forum, one person mentioned and some it's on some privacy/public whois domains.

This forum has this email address, DNF has this email address, 2 registrars have this email address and anyone lurking the whois data on several hundred domains has this email address which is used as a "privacy shield" is a better way of stating it as I listed a person that is known to own DNF. Just being as transparent as I can.

As far as the email from RookMedia, it wasn't to the email in question, rather another email address that I used for domains listed on Sedo. So, RookMedia reached out to me with this:

Dear Mr.David,

My name is Sebastian Hauser and I work with RookMedia.net, a leading domain monetization company. We launched a little over 2 years ago now and our core team has over 55 years of domain industry experience.

I noticed that you are parking some domains with Sedo at the moment and I was wondering if you'd be interested in testing out our services?

If you are interested or if you have any questions at all please let me know

Thanks in advance

If anyone else received a similar email regarding Sedo parking, then RookMedia should be called out for spam as well (but as stated, he took a personal approach and one extra step to find the real owner and probably would have only sent one). However, like others, I opted to join their parking platform as it was targeted and written in such a way that if I didn't reply, he would have crossed me off the list. We can all safely say that ONE Chinese company crosses the line with multiple emails and even attacking you on social media to join.

So, as both @Eric_Lyon and I stated earlier, this all comes down to business ethics.

Who is going to be the deciding body to say that this is wrong for a large corporation to do, but okay for small portfolio holders? Nobody can. Because it's business to go out there and sell domains, whether you own 1 or 10000.

In summary with regards to what Freemarket has done, my stance is determined by whether this was ethical/illegal through the method that they utilized: send the email to the domain that failed to sell or the company which failed to sell the domain (as well as how many). If the latter, I say it's good to go. It's only questionable to send it to the email on the domain that failed to sell (in other words, one more step to find the real owner and target them so you don't send out more than necessary to the same person).

I've never listed a domain on Flippa.

To make this clearer, could you have been targeted because a domain you authorized someone else to sell on Flippa didn't sell, and they sent it to the owner and not seller?

Either way, we can safely say that this was an aggressive marketing campaign. If you were in charge, you may end up sending the same email. It all comes down to business ethics. Personally, I would take the extra step and send to the seller, rather than the domain owner, and only once (also clarify that by ignoring the email, they won't receive any further messages which subliminally states that it was an advertisement).

Since we can only speculate on the method they used to retrieve email addresses, simply report as spam and move on or take them up on their offer in my opinion.

 

[iowadawg]

I know enough that if you did not like my statement, you are part of the problem.

 

[Tia Wood]

I just got one today from a failed Flippa auction from over a year ago.

 

[Joseph Green]

@tomcarl

There is a big difference between:

"Hey, I heard you're in the market for a home. I have a beautiful beachfront property that I'd love to show you to see if you're interested."

And:

"Hello, we are a real estate company and would like to sell your house. Press 1 to be connected to a live agent, or Press 2 to be removed from our calling list."

The former is domainers and brokers.

The latter is Freemarket.

 

[jamesosix]

WOW!~!!
They are doing just what every domainer does!!!!
ANd you say it is spam and wrong?

Not really though.
A general domainer may attempt to contact a specific person regarding a potential sale with a particular name. This being targeted and limited. Freemarket have sent probably thousands of emails to flippa sellers who have failed selling a name on a service, trying to sell their own service. There is a massive difference imo.

 

[timestamp]

That's targeted and limited. They are contacting domainers who list domains on one marketplace, to try another marketplace. Spot on.

If you don't want to be contacted by whois email, just put email filters in place. It's that easy.

But this is a fail on freemarkets side. They need to get winners not losers. By getting winners to list there, they will attract losers too. So simple.

 

[jamesosix]

i hardly call sending thousands of emails to thousands of people in one swoop as "limited".

My point being if I send somebody an email about a domain, its specific to that person. What freemarket have done is basically send the same email to lots of different people with the odd change (such as the domain name in question). Thats not targeted. Thats spamming.

 

[N-A]

Not really though.
A general domainer may attempt to contact a specific person regarding a potential sale with a particular name. This being targeted and limited. Freemarket have sent probably thousands of emails to flippa sellers who have failed selling a name on a service, trying to sell their own service. There is a massive difference imo.

I see in your signature that you sell drone domains. I may own drone domains that I feel you're interested in. If I contact you through NamePros with the list, I am conversation spamming due to NamePros rules.

However, if I run a whois on your .co.uk name, I may now have an email that I can target to you.

But wait, this is a .co.uk domain and doesn't include an email address. So is this Verisign's fault for not following the same type of whois data protection provided by Nominet?

Now, I have to surf over your page and find a good email, with no ado as your contact form is broken. Thus, you've made it much harder (even if your form did work, it may flag me for spam anyway). But, I found a method of contact: your email is public on Facebook.

Having painstakingly found that information, can I now email you and you not get a little agitated? I'm sure you would, and report it as spam... as we all do, but take this action to find end users too.

Would you like this email? Probably not. Is it spam? Not at all under CAN-SPAM. Nor did I break the policy of harvesting your email address manually. Did I break policies under European Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications? Maybe, as it's vague and can vary by country. Though, I believe jurisdiction falls under the law of where it was sent from and not the recipient.

It's just an infinite loop that can't be solved without angering someone, or everyone just has to follow good business ethics, which cannot be defined either as it would just be an opinion as well. Even if the governing body (ICANN) declares that Nominet's way is the way to go so no email can be sent as easily as just scraping the whois database, you can see that a problem still exists: and it's within us.

It took more work to find your email and bots could be written to do the same, but since it could be all over the place and hidden, it made it harder where a human had to do it.

 

[jamesosix]

if it was customised to me, then i wouldnt consider it a problem.

ie "i see you are selling drone related domains via your link at NP forums"....etc.