GoDaddy Might Be Making Your Inbound Inquiry Via WHOIS Impossible

[jideofor]

Has anybody noticed that contact details of domains at Godaddy are being deleted or non existing? If you have your domains at Godaddy and receive inbound inquiries for domains that you have at Godaddy, this might be killing your chances of receiving offers/inquiries.

For some time now, they have been on this scheme. First you can't view them when you use WHOIS.COM and then they went to further to make it impossible to see contact details when you use ICANN whois search.

Who else has taken note? I might be wrong or my computer is giving off false information but I would like to know if I am the only one experiencing this.

 

[DanSanchez]

Personally done with Godaddy, this has been a constant issue for me in the past year. They also love changing WHOIS info to NAMEFIND emails so the inquiries go there after the domain is expired. Then they make it impossible to transfer a name even though it should have never been changed.

Regardless, if you see the WHOIS record truncated, you are getting screwed. This is their way of centralizing inquiries for Afternic/NameFind. Not to mention they tell customers they need to pay for an agent to buy any name, thus adding 20% to the cost of the name and taking away from your bottom line without adding any value whatsoever.

If you have an issue with spam, buy a PO box and get a privacy domain that forwards emails through your own server. There is NO excuse to truncate WHOIS results.

 

[Haykay2005]

There should be a way to opt out of that rubbish

 

[pokainc]

Overall whether the domain is at Godaddy or not, I see the details with the Godaddy whois. One thing I've noticed though is that if you check the whois info of a "Godaddy registered" domain at some of the other whois checking sites, it might not show the info and you're forced to go to Godaddy. That being said I've noticed the this also with some tucows domains; you check on Godaddy whois and it doesn't show, you're forced to go to tucows. Not sure, but it seems each registrar is trying to find subtle ways to force you to visit their own site.

 

[DomainBarracksRob]

I've noticed this recently too. So why do they even offer and Charge for privacy at this point? If they going make it private to being with it, that seems a bit $hady .

 

[Arca]

I go there to access GD WHOIS records, but I merely end up playing a never ending game of recaptcha.

Even after correctly clicking on the street signs or storefronts or whatever recaptcha is asking me to do for 15 minutes straight they won't show me any WHOIS records.

 

[Kuffy]

Godaddy is becoming more and more of a nuisance. I don't bother to look at their site any more.

 

[jideofor]

Overall whether the domain is at Godaddy or not, I see the details with the Godaddy whois. One thing I've noticed though is that if you check the whois info of a "Godaddy registered" domain at some of the other whois checking sites, it might not show the info and you're forced to go to Godaddy. That being said I've noticed the this also with some tucows domains; you check on Godaddy whois and it doesn't show, you're forced to go to tucows. Not sure, but it seems each registrar is trying to find subtle ways to force you to visit their own site.

wow... this is really not need to stress people. Why do big companies become arrogant in dispensing their services ones they become the leading hub?

 

[elevator]

The reason is fairly obvious: whois is abused by spammers and data miners.
Why do you think GD makes you fill out a captcha on their website ?

But with your experience; I 'm sure you know this is one of the major ways to get across to domainers by the end users, and when the WHOIS are not accessible it makes things difficult for end users to get to the owner.

 

[creataweb]

Glad my handful of names left at GD will be gone within a month or so. Horrible interface doesn't help either.

 

[anantj]

I agree with almost all of what has been said on this thread. @Joe Styler , @Paul Nicks You might want to take note.
Personally, for me, even the whois service on the GD website does not work. Even after disabling my adblocker. I suspect it might have to do with the force https extension (published by the EFF) but I'm not sure. So, almost always, I don't even bother with domains that are registered with GD

 

[tonyk2000]

As per ICANN requirements, accredited registrars must have both web-based whois AND working whois server on port 43. OK, web-based whois @ godaddy works fine (with captcha).

What is happening with regular port 43 whois is more interesting. After 3-4 requests in a raw from the same IP, this ip becomes banned forever (only partial whois record is returned).

How can this be in compliance with ICANN rules? It is definitely not. IPs are commonly shared in current isp environments, most notably with 3g/4g connections. Accordingly, current GD policy may prevent somebody from checking one and only whois record just once, simply because another customer of the same isp checked godaddy whois 4 times in a raw a year ago. I bet ICANN did not have such a possibility in mind when they developed official whois policies.

Well, indeed there is tons of whois harvesters, spammers and data miners. It is likely that @Joe Styler or @Paul Nicks (should they come to this thread) will explain that GoDaddy is doing their best to protect us the customers from those bad guys (and that GD also elected to become incompliant with ICANN regulations for such a good purpose).

There are a few side effects though - it should now become more hard to transfer-away from godaddy (especially to smaller registrars that may not have their IPs whitelisted by GD for the purposes of retreiving full whois), and also it may become more hard to purchase SSL certificate from another supplier for GoDaddy-registered domain, as whois check is one of commonly used methods to verify domain control for SSL certificate sellers.

Accordingly, it appears that current GoDaddy policy is undoubtfully a win-win situation for both godaddy enduser customers (who are now well protected from data harvesters) and for GoDaddy itself (who will now have more sales of GoDaddy SSL certificates and less domains transferred away).
I am speaking seriously, it is now more practical for any enduser to handreg their domain with GoDaddy as they should see less Indian spam arriving with design/hosting/logo offers as the result of domain registration. Simply because whois is not working

How beneficial is this policy for domainers? ZERO benefits imho. I have domains for sale regged with GoDaddy, and I WANT to receive requests from potential buyers also via whois channel. I do NOT want whois records of my domains to be restricted in any aspect.

Cc: @Joe Styler / @Paul Nicks - can you comment please????

 

[Joe Styler]

I am just catching up from being away for a few days for Thanksgiving. We are testing things on port 43 not the web based lookup. We are definitely blocking info and this is not against ICANN rules. We have to support WHOIS on port 43 for other registrars to do things like transfer domains we do not have to make our WHOIS available to anyone who wants to mine it. So we are trying to block aggressive spammers in several ways there have been other threads on people being spammed by email, sms, and phone on any new domain registration from companies pretending to be us and offering logo or web design services for instance. We have the right to protect our customers from abuse like this. It is not just us as has already been pointed out above and I suspect we will not be the last to do this.

We also have gotten feedback from domain investors who are concerned that this will impact them and their potential for sales. I don't think it will play a big role in that as most people using the WHOIS are already tech savvy enough to know about the WHOIS and can follow the instructions at the bottom of the third party WHOIS result saying for full info go to GoDaddy with the link to click in most cases that takes you right to the WHOIS. I think people looking for your info will get it if they wan to buy your name but people trying to harvest 1 million names at a time to spam you will have a much harder time getting to you.

Having said this we have listened to the feedback from customers who are concerned and are working on a manual solution (for now depending on demand) to allow you to have your domain WHOIS info listed publicly anywhere anyone wants to grab it with no restrictions. If you want to be on that list when it gets deployed in the next couple weeks please email [email protected] with your account information and the request to add your names to that list.

I do sell names I own and personally I am not opting in to show my info all over the place. I prefer to get less spam email and do not think it will impact my sales.

 

[NamesMax]

One of the other negatives of this, @Joe Styler, is that I use Efty to manage my portfolio. The whois record is used to update my records at Efty. It now does not update my Go Daddy records.

I was in the process of abandoning Go Daddy and got down to about 50 or so names registered there. I spent time talking with my VIP Act Exec and I decided to give Go Daddy another look, specifically because of the end user familiarity with the brand. I transferred over 500 names to Go Daddy.

I then tried to update the information in Efty to realize that 99% would not update. Even the names that I recently registered at Go Daddy were not complete. Efty could not even pull from the Whois, anything but the dates.

Can you realize how time consuming and frustrating going back and manually inputting this information for 500 names was? Yes I saved $160 in fee costs as a result of Go Daddy transfer pricing, but I lost a heck of a lot more in my valuable time doing what the automated software could and should have been doing. Suffice it to say giving Go Daddy another "look" was not a pretty sight. Go Daddy's lose will be Epik's gain.

 

[Asfas1000]

One of the other negatives of this, @Joe Styler, is that I use Efty to manage my portfolio. The whois record is used to update my records at Efty. It now does not update my Go Daddy records.

Same experience here, Efty won't update properly.

 

[Kate]

I am just catching up from being away for a few days for Thanksgiving. We are testing things on port 43 not the web based lookup. We are definitely blocking info and this is not against ICANN rules. We have to support WHOIS on port 43 for other registrars to do things like transfer domains we do not have to make our WHOIS available to anyone who wants to mine it.

If I am not wrong registrars usually whitelist each other based on the basis of designated IP addresses.

I know that I may be in the minority, but I like the stricter whois policies of some ccTLD registries.
For example if you want to know the registrant of a .se domain you have to check on the Swedish registry website and fill out a captcha if you need to drill down the registrant details. That makes it impractical for spammers to mine the whois database. But if somebody needs to contact you for a good reason, they can.
When we register those ccTLDs we never get spam.

If the whois output says you need to check on Godaddy to get full registrant name I guess the other party should be able to figure that out. The problem though is when you use a third party website to check whois, for example Dynadot, and it returns nothing because it cannot connect to the Godaddy whois server. Then we have a problem. The problem is the lack of consistency.

 

[sofiapartner]

I left godaddy and don't care about them. Poor support, very expensive, not user-friendly site, always trying to sell you something additional... ughh... so happy that I am not there anymore.

 

[ResoluteDomains]

Has anybody noticed that contact details of domains at Godaddy are being deleted or non existing? If you have your domains at Godaddy and receive inbound inquiries for domains that you have at Godaddy, this might be killing your chances of receiving offers/inquiries.

For some time now, they have been on this scheme. First you can't view them when you use WHOIS.COM and then they went to further to make it impossible to see contact details when you use ICANN whois search.

Who else has taken note? I might be wrong or my computer is giving off false information but I would like to know if I am the only one experiencing this.

With the craziness of the holidays, and my life in general, I seem to have missed this. Yes, I have been commenting about this for many months. 1/2 of my domains suddenly have almost no WHOIS info. The .IO registry owners who took over earlier 2017 have done similar.

Inbound inquiries crashed. I hate the spam but in there were legit offers AND sales were made from there. Now, NO inbound offers on those WHOIS-limited domains I own. Thats for posting this, thought it was just my names and since there is no way for me to contact GoDaddy these days (telephone and chat are not an option for me), I just figured I'd leave it be.

 

[Joe Styler]

This post I did on GoDaddy's community help pages explains the changes and how to opt out if you do not want your whois info to be limited on port 43 automated lookups. https://www.godaddy.com/Domain-Investing/Whois-Masking-what-is-changing/td-p/88329

 

[elevator]

Has anybody noticed that contact details of domains at Godaddy are being deleted or non existing? If you have your domains at Godaddy and receive inbound inquiries for domains that you have at Godaddy, this might be killing your chances of receiving offers/inquiries.

For some time now, they have been on this scheme. First you can't view them when you use WHOIS.COM and then they went to further to make it impossible to see contact details when you use ICANN whois search.

Who else has taken note? I might be wrong or my computer is giving off false information but I would like to know if I am the only one experiencing this.

What I observed is that some of them put domains at WHOIS contactprivacy which is very bad of them

 

[Kuffy]

You guys need to realise that Godaddy is not a domainers registrar any more - it's for end users, they are happy to pay more for a limited service, and they buy hosting and other addons as well. Professional domainers know where to get better deals on these services.

 

[Kate]

The reason is fairly obvious: whois is abused by spammers and data miners.
Why do you think GD makes you fill out a captcha on their website ?

 

[Jasonn]

Whois for .com and .net domains with godaddy hasn't worked on certain sites for years. now it looks like they are taking it a step further and "censoring" names and email addresses.

however this only applies to some whois lookups...dynadot doesn't work. whois.net doesn't work but looking up on icann worked for me and networksolutions and a few others i tried. not sure what the difference is as to why some work and some don't.

 

[Kate]

...
however this only applies to some whois lookups...dynadot doesn't work. whois.net doesn't work but looking up on icann worked for me and networksolutions and a few others i tried. not sure what the difference is as to why some work and some don't.

It's because the website you use acts as a proxy: it connects to the whois server of the registrar and then displays the output back to you. After a number of queries from the same IP address, the registrar blacklists the address for some time. So that may work or not work depending on the website you use and when the query is performed.

 

[SpareDomains]

Honestly I wouldn't mind as in 15 years of selling domains very very rare I get whois offers since my domains have always pointed to my own sales pages. Most whois offers would be domainer offers as well since more domainers would know how to look that up over an end user and I try not to sell domains to domainers. Prefer offers coming to my site with name, email, phone, ip, message etc...

If you owned GoDaddy and companies were slamming your servers for whois data and abusing=spam or selling that info wouldn't you make it difficult to grab? I would unless they were kicking me a cut of all those monthly subscription fees.