GoDaddy Blocking Emails?

[BostonDomainer]

Does anyone know when Godaddy stopped forwarding emails from domains that are under privacy? I just checked my portfolio and it seems that there is a new setting requirement and the option to receive emails sent to @domainproxy was disabled on all my domains over 1k there and you now have to manually (1 by 1 as no bulk option) enable the option to forward emails from an interested party using domainproxy to your main email address. I wonder how many offers were not received because of this as, with privacy, I used to always receive email offers, I decided to check and noticed this major change. Did Godaddy issue any press release or email info on this as this seems rather problematic on several points. Let me know if I'm missing something and if someone can bring some clarity on this @Joe Styler @James Iles

thanks

 

[Keith]

One definition of spam is unsolicited commercial email. That’s what a purchase offer is.

Interest in buying the domain is the first option they provide. Weird thing to then go and filter out certain requests.

Reason for contact: *
Interest in buying this domain name
Domain name or content is being used in malware, or for spam or abuse
Domain name or content is infringing on a trademark or violating local laws or regulations
Research or other purpose

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

What would be especially helpful here is having the various domain registrars comment if GoDaddy's practice is the standard also for them.
Or, perhaps we could start a different thread to address the broader concern here?

Thank you to the astute Namepros member who first alerted us to this problem within, I think, this past year. The problem appears to have been going on much, much longer than that, though. So who knows how many potential sales leads over the years have been lost by these GD domain owners?

Privacy is not meant to be, by default, blocking any communication with a domain owner. And it certainly doesn't imply consent for a third party to intercept and be privy to messages that are trying to be sent to that individual or company.

 

[karmaco]

They will message you to let you know you have interest in a domain and want to know how low you will go my reply was just to send me the lead and will handle it myself. There is plenty i don't like about this i also haven't authorized Afternic but they notice it appearing. There is plenty i don't like about domaining and i get a lot of negative feedback just trying to sort out fact. They aren't exactly blocking email just offering free privacy thinking can catch the customer and keep offering them other names should not commit to the one landed on. This is my main gripe right now.


From: xxx
Sent: date 2022
To: xxx
Subject: censored.COM - [Appraisals Enclosed]


GoDaddy
Hi xxx,

I wanted to follow-up again to see whether you had a price in mind to sell the censored.COM domain name.

I’ve included some appraisals below. Of course, I have many domain names that I’d happily sell for less than their appraised value because it’s very rare for a buyer to come along. However, appraisals can give some rough guidance on pricing:

DOMAIN: censored..COM

APPRAISAL #1: https://www.godaddy.com/domain-value-appraisal

APPRAISAL #2: https://www.estibot.com/

We can facilitate the entire sales process in-house at GoDaddy and the buyer would be paying all broker/listing fees too.

Can you think about this and let me know a dollar amount that you would consider?

Regards,
xxx

This is the kind of stuff that irks me. Their appraisals are shit and generally a low wholesale price. Even the comparable sales are iffy because you don’t know when that sale happened. Last month or ten years ago— pricing should be different.

Also the verbiage they talk like you are a dumb child who needs to be scolded into a low price not like an intelligent adult fully capable of pricing your own domains. You can’t get an offer without their brokers trying to stick their nose in either.

 

[DomainBarracksRob]

I get the concern generally, but why would someone bother to pull the whois information and email you when they could have simply typed in the name to a browser and gotten your landing page? Or searched for the name in any of the large marketplaces that would include the affiliates? I've never gotten anything but bullshit from those emails. All that said, everyone should be able to make the choice. Personally I stopped replying to any of them long before GoDaddy shut it off.

Honestly it use to happen more often then most realize. Savvy buyers will do this sometimes when trying to remain Anon.....I've not had a WHOIS inquiry in a very long time....I'm sure this is why. Also this is good when resellers such as us also are trying to contact an owner about a name, this impacts us on the buy, not cool if you ask me. I'm not pleased with what GoDaddys been cooking lately.....especially after this summer...when I went into my dashboard and saw 2 High End Names had Once Active but "closed" by the time I seen them "Broker negations " on names buyers were interested in.

I Never received an Email, or a call.....only to find out once I called my rep..leads that went cold/silent/no responses

...OKayyyyyy But Still WHY was I not Notified? Instead I stumbled upon these "old leads" by mishap of a friend telling me same thing happen to him and to check..!?!!?


Reguarding the main topic of this thread, Some noise about this email forwarding block should be made
@EJS @Robbie are few that also come to mind with voices and blogs.

 

[lock]

Brokers have always stuck their nose in with decent names. To find people to work with ethics is a challenge. Let them turn over brokers i will stick around like always.

 

[411domains]

I was one of, if not, the very first to express my feelings about this rollout to my Premier Rep.
The good news is they're working on it.

 

[Mister Funsky]

Thanks for the alert.
Could you share the two other registrars where this appears to be an issue?

It may be important for those registrants to double check to see whether they are having problems with email forwarding there as well.

Since they both monitor this site and I'm doing a bit of battle with both, I wont mention them...yet.

I found out by testing just one name at each registrar...most I use worked. Take a few minutes and test a few...in the case of registrar, I think they fixed the issue.

 

[forge]

There were people mass spamming on DBP

What is DBP?

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

Basically they're forcing you to pay about $70 to go through their brokers to reach out to a domain owner who explicitly stated it's ok to show their contact details.

Well, it certainly is a possibility. A registrar that also has a large brokerage department needs to be mindful of the potential conflicts of interest here.

Even if the intent here is not to force potential buyers to their brokerage, the point is that that may be the result. To me, what's even more disturbing is that this change happened without alerting me. Did anyone receive any notice that their "privacy off" policy now included this email address blocking? When did this change happen?

 

[MasterOfMyDomains]

It will be fixed in 60 days James said

Apologies for the delay @BostonDomainer. I know how important the Domains by Proxy feature is to domain investors, and with that in mind, I can say that the email forwarding feature is slated to be enabled by default for new registrations in the next 60 days, which includes bulk functionality. Domains in the interim will likely need to be manually adjusted.

That was Jan 5th though
https://www.namepros.com/threads/godaddy-blocking-emails.1291876/#post-8805435

Or is forwarding working and not showing whois only.
I have no domains at daddy so not sure

 

[Sutruk]

That page is on the web. It is a form. It allows you to communicate. Ostensibly, the domain registrant is sent an email when you use it.

The fact that it does not allow you to type out a detailed message or do anything beyond select a few canned choices does not somehow disqualify it from being a "web form to facilitate email communication with the relevant contact".

To the extent that you would like the form to have other features, that's simply a matter of your own opinion as to what features a "web form to facilitate email communication with the relevant contact" should have.

But, I can guarantee you, ICANN is not going to go to the mat with GoDaddy on whether that form, in particular, does or does not satisfy the condition of being a "web form to facilitate email communication with the relevant contact". It is virtually certain that the IP people have already beaten on their door with complaints they are unable to attach copies of trademark records, court filings, and other things that they would like to be able to send to domain registrants as well. It is also a certainty that their complaints to ICANN were very well argued.

Being able to type in your contact information and select options for communicating in a message to be sent to the registrant of the domain name is most certainly a "web form". It's not much of one, but that's a question of degree, not kind.

Thanks for your reply Mr. Berryhill, always appreciated your helpful insights. I suppose that I have to agree with you on that.

But besides the definition of what would be a "web form", there are the kind of difficulties Godaddy makes in their Whois data to find out even that web form.

I mean, they literally put in the "Registrant email" place, a link to the same page. That's a first "stone" in the user's way looking or wanting to get in contact with the domain owner.
I am not a newbie, but I think I needed at least 2-3 checks to see what's going on with that link, because everytime I put it in my address bar, it appeared the same whois page.

Registrant Email: Select Contact Domain Holder link at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?domain=mydomain.com

To finally find out that you have to scroll down all the whois data page to the bottom, to see there's a link in the middle of "See underlying Registry Data" and "Report invalid Whois" where it says "Contact Domain Holder".

Why not make that link to go directly to the "web form" instead of to the same page? That's just the first stone in the way to find out how you can communicate with the domain owner through Godaddy's whois data page.

 

[jberryhill]

But besides the definition of what would be a "web form", there are the kind of difficulties Godaddy makes in their Whois data to find out even that web form.

Absolutely.

I have been telling people for 20 years not to use Whois privacy services for similar reasons.

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

As an update, with "privacy off," now the email is directly showing up in all fields. So, this appear to be progress.

Granted, due to concerns about how permanent this fix really is, my preference is to continue having the email contact cited within the organization field as well.

About 1 1/2 yrs ago, the email visibility issues had supposedly been fixed, but then these most recent changes had appeared. So, if permissible by ICANN, using a separate field to include the email contact info, might be added reassurance.

So, it's great if GD has a permanent fix here.

If your privacy is "on," perhaps with any registrar it may be wise to periodically send an email through their forwarding proxy service, to make certain that you are actually likely to be receiving communications (if that is the setting you have chosen).

 

[James Iles]

Apologies for the delay @BostonDomainer. I know how important the Domains by Proxy feature is to domain investors, and with that in mind, I can say that the email forwarding feature is slated to be enabled by default for new registrations in the next 60 days, which includes bulk functionality. Domains in the interim will likely need to be manually adjusted.

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

I get the concern generally, but why would someone bother to pull the whois information and email you when they could have simply typed in the name to a browser and gotten your landing page? Or searched for the name in any of the large marketplaces that would include the affiliates? I've never gotten anything but bullshit from those emails. All that said, everyone should be able to make the choice. Personally I stopped replying to any of them long before GoDaddy shut it off.

Yes, it's understandable that it may not be worth the hassle to get those emails. And, no doubt GD had some feedback, when spam was extremely rampant, that customers wanted the spam to stop, ergo perhaps this drastic solution.
But, consider the benefit potentially of those few cherished buyers that do come to you.

1. Commission save generally 10-20% currently with the marketplaces --- unless using you use your own customized landers.

2.Communication -- email is fast, with no go between. And the domain owner who is a negotiation pro can work his or her magic directly

3. Confidentiality-- the potential buyer is a lead, with potential for other sales. Do you really want to share that lead with others?

4. Cost-- For the buyer, they are not faced with additional potential upselling. This includes being required to renew the domain even if it is not even close to expiration. A sale could be lost at that point, when the price starts going up higher than you posted.
Or, by being redirected to a broker, they could be sold a different, more expensive alternative. And you might not even know that your lander was used as a "bait and switch."

5. Clarity-- you don't have to worry about losing a potential customer that doesn't want to deal with some third-party lander or broker.

And it really is important to be reminded that some potential end-users may be far more comfortable directly dealing with the owner. It's a matter of choice you are also honoring, if that's what they would prefer.

 

[Dane]

I agree it is really bad to default to NOT receiving communication. Godaddy needs to fix this ASAP for all domains - not just newly registered ones. I was told that you could have them changed in bulk by sending an email to [email protected] - including your account number, call-in PIN, the list of domains that you want switched to receiving emails and the email that you want it forwarded to.

So silly that we would have to do that.

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

This is actually not just a 'domainer' issue.

My understanding is that it's an ICANN requirement that the email on the whois gets to the domain owner. So even if it's using an obfuscated email (such as the email address being obfuscated in the whois record), an email sent to that email address MUST be delivered to the domain owner. The registrar cannot block it or send it anywhere else--they have to send it or forward it to the domain owner.

There are a lot of reasons someone may need to contact the real domain owner of a domain, not just because someone wants to buy the domain from them.

Absolutely agreed. And, for the "spam email filtering option," it's concerning whether those agreeing to it understand fully the implications of such a setting.

What puzzles me as well is how it is justified to have first class email also blocked? Aren't there laws against that in the U.S.? If someone has not explicitly consented to this, perhaps that needs to be promptly changed.

This potentially a very important privacy issue for a company. A business may have multiple domain names, some of which only are currently being used. Do they really want a third party potentially intercepting their first class mail. The term in their GD agreement is (bold emphasis added)

You agree DBP will review and forward communications addressed to Your domain name that are received via email, certified or traceable courier mail (such as UPS, FedEx, or DHL), or first class U.S. postal mail.

Does any business readily agree to have a third party opening mail and package deliveries intended for that actual company? Isn't that a potentially significant security concern? Does the term "review" include actual inspection of the contents of the packages and letters? If so, there would be some very real privacy concerns here.

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

The email contact information for admin/tech/billing is still not showing up with the GoDaddy-registered domains, even with privacy off. Is there any time frame for fixing this problem that appears to be affecting muliptle customers?

@James Iles

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

Thanks for the insights.
You mentioned the temporary specifications of the GDPR back in 2018.

If one lives in the USA, is the GDPR applicable?

Having one's email presented with privacy off doesn't seem to be an issue with at least 2 major registrars for US customers.

So is this more of an issue for residents in the EU? Can't registrants in the US still have a choice of how all their contact information is displayed in Whois, when privacy off? And can they have that regardless of how it's presented in the address bar?

 

[jberryhill]

Weird thing to then go and filter out certain requests.

It's also a weird thing to provide a service for free when you are also charging $69 for it otherwise.

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

We're not talking about filtering... talking about forwarding being turned off completely for all names and you have to manually go through a few steps, re-enable for each domain 1 by 1.

Yes, the setting is not consent to have spam filtering activated. It is a complete, blanket blocking of ALL EMAIL TO YOUR DOMAIN registrant, etc, by DEFAULT. No explicit consent. Nothing to double check with registrant that they really intended this.

When that very astute Namepros member posted about this problem last year, it was surprising tome that there wasn't much more of an uproar. At a minimum, an alert to all members might have helped prevent this confusion AND perhaps have helped folks get more direct sales.

,Again, an important question here is how many leads and potential sales have been lost due to this? Not just for the domain name in question, mind you, but for other catchy names you may have had or still have? A potential buyer may be a very valuable resource to a domain investor, especially a prospect that comes via inbound directly to you.

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

Well, these are the current legal documents linked to GoDaddy's website relating to the domainsbyproxy agreements. GoDaddy Legal DomainsByProxy Agreement and Domains By Proxy Privacy Policy

These terms agreed to by customers raise some interesting issues. What does the DomainsBYProxy "review" of emails and mail sent to you via the domain actually mean? So, if you are using their service even with privacy off, do they review your emails?
In terms of blocking mail, apparently even first class postal mail is not forwarded? So, regular mail gets blocked? Junk mail is one thing, but what if a company is trying to contact your directly via mail to try to buy your domain?

Inasmuch as DBP's name, postal address and phone number will be listed in the Whois directory, You agree DBP will review and forward communications addressed to Your domain name that are received via email, certified or traceable courier mail (such as UPS, FedEx, or DHL), or first class U.S. postal mail. You specifically acknowledge DBP will not forward to You first class postal mail (other than legal notices), "junk" mail or other unsolicited communications (whether delivered through email, fax, postal mail or telephone), and You further authorize DBP to either discard all such communications or return all such communications to sender unopened. You agree to waive any and all claims arising from Your failure to receive communications directed to Your domain name but not forwarded to You by DBP.

 

[fogfever]

Thanks for stopping by Bob.. I know it depends on the regiatrar... some forward emails sent to private whois go straight to you which is what GD used to do and changed without notice while others have guided forms to address issues like Dynadot.

I'll dig a little further tomorrow at others.

A few questions I have:
1)When did this change occur? And why do I have to manually re-enable this now. I have over 1k names there and to do it one by one is prohibitive and not happening no bulk option.

I agree it is really bad to default to NOT receiving communication. Godaddy needs to fix this ASAP for all domains - not just newly registered ones. I was told that you could have them changed in bulk by sending an email to [email protected] - including your account number, call-in PIN, the list of domains that you want switched to receiving emails and the email that you want it forwarded to.

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

I've been keeping my eye on this. So far it's 33 days and they still haven't switched new transfers to automatically receiving emails.
But Godaddy did change the options for the 'email forwarding' section. Now you have to click on it and manually enter the email you want it forwarded to. Seems like they made a change but not the one to automatically transfer emails yet. It still defaults to blocking all emails for newly transferred domains.

Please consider here that domain owners, including new transfers, deserve clarity in these choices. Even when stating "filter for spam," does the registrant understand the implication that the registrar could intercept and read the emails? Is that what folks really want? Could the registrar take those leads and start marketing to them directly? And how do you know that any such offers would ever be sent to you? After all, they could be spam?!

That's fine if registrants don't care about that. But, if they do care about this, and don't want any potential offers and leads being obtained by GD, then would it be better that this is explicit?

I truly don't think there is any domain investor on this forum that actually wants to share their leads and potential offers with any registrar and brokers.

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

Just a heads up to all...

Gddy is not the only registrar to 'block' or stop forwarding emails. I've made formal complaints to two others who stopped forwarding...according to one buyer, over 3 months ago.

Thanks for the alert.
Could you share the two other registrars where this appears to be an issue?

It may be important for those registrants to double check to see whether they are having problems with email forwarding there as well.