Let's set the record straight. NameCheap.com does NOT sell search information, period

[enetwork]

Hello All,

I am the CEO of NameCheap.com and I've seen a few threads in here stating that we sell your search information to other companies to register.

I am here to set the record straight once and for all. NameCheap has NEVER sold ANY of our clients information in ANY way shape or from nor do we EVER plan on doing so in the future.

Seriously, we have always prided ourselves as being an upfront and honest company and nothing has changed so let's not jump to conclusions.

There are rumors that this information is being obtained at and sold directly at the verisign registry which bypasses all and any registrars.

In the past couple of weeks I've seen honest and reliable companies such as iwhois.com, Fabulous.com and many others including ourselves implicated in this sort of behavior. This needs to stop and it needs to stop now.

Honest companies are being implicated for behavior they have absolutely no part of.

Let's be fair and rational here before jumping to conclusions. Anything you wish to discuss or would like us to address, please let me know. I am here to answer any and all questions as best I can.

I will also try to get reps from the other companies being unfairly accused into this thread so they can give their perspective.

Sincerely,

Richard Kirkendall
CEO

NameCheap.com

 

[mbuna]

Thanks for your comments Richard. I'd love to hear from other companies as well including dotreg.com which I've used for some time.

 

[accent]

Thanks Richard. There are several very serious issues facing the industry at this time. Along with theft of search data I would add reverse hijacking of generic domains and the loopholes exposed by the Registerfly mess.

While your company has no direct control of any of these issues you and the other registrars can be of great help in moving these issues forward.

 

[Silhouette]

There are rumors that this information is being obtained at and sold directly at the verisign registry which bypasses all and any registrars.

IF this is TRUE, that means there is NO safe place to check .COM/.NET availability anymore... since the one who manages the central database is the "culprit"

Now... I am lost....

 

[lzy]

Thanks for taking time out to clarify Namecheap's stand.

 

[verbster]

I am here to set the record straight once and for all. NameCheap has NEVER sold ANY of our clients information in ANY way shape or from nor do we EVER plan on doing so in the future.

This kind of philosophy and policy is very much appreciated.

What I think some folks are curious about is the monitoring of domain queries to see if they are available...and the subsequent appearance of more than coincidence that those queried domains are registered by someone or some company shortly following the query.

If your use of "sale" includes that there is no monitoring and sharing of these domain availability queries, then folks can relax. Is that what you meant? Is there any way you know of this type of monitoring and "sharing" could happen?

Thanks.

 

[enetwork]

If your use of "sale" includes that there is no monitoring and sharing of these domain availability queries, then folks can relax. Is that what you meant? Is there any way you know of this type of monitoring and "sharing" could happen?

Yes, this is exactly what I meant. The only thing we have ever used our clients data for is internal day to day registrar operations and that's it.

It's been known for many years that any of verisign's data is for sale at the right price. That would be the first place I would look.

 

[Sam]

Hello All,

I am the CEO of NameCheap.com and I've seen a few threads in here stating that we sell your search information to other companies to register.

I am here to set the record straight once and for all. NameCheap has NEVER sold ANY of our clients information in ANY way shape or from nor do we EVER plan on doing so in the future.

Seriously, we have always prided ourselves as being an upfront and honest company and nothing has changed so let's not jump to conclusions.

There are rumors that this information is being obtained at and sold directly at the verisign registry which bypasses all and any registrars.

In the past couple of weeks I've seen honest and reliable companies such as iwhois.com, Fabulous.com and many others including ourselves implicated in this sort of behavior. This needs to stop and it needs to stop now.

Honest companies are being implicated for behavior they have absolutely no part of.

Let's be fair and rational here before jumping to conclusions. Anything you wish to discuss or would like us to address, please let me know. I am here to answer any and all questions as best I can.

I will also try to get reps from the other companies being unfairly accused into this thread so they can give their perspective.

Sincerely,

Richard Kirkendall
CEO

NameCheap.com

I REALLY doubt your claim that verisign is logging in all whois requests. The fact is not a SINGLE name has ever been "tasted" when i looked up via Moniker Whois and guess what, whois.sc has tasted them by the next day

 

[champ_rock]

NameCheap has NEVER sold ANY of our clients information in ANY way shape or from nor do we EVER plan on doing so in the future.

does this mean that any searches done when u are not logged in to ur account are not covered in this statement?

 

[enetwork]

I REALLY doubt your claim that verisign is logging in all whois requests. The fact is not a SINGLE name has ever been "tasted" when i looked up via Moniker Whois and guess what, whois.sc has tasted them by the next day

Oh really, so what does this thread say about moniker then http://www.namepros.com/domain-name-discussion/369192-moniker-is-rigged.html ?

Does that mean that moniker is stealing your searches? Is the above thread proof enough for you? Of course not. As I said, this is happening to many honest companies including moniker.

We all need to get together and get to the bootom of this and stop it ASAP!

does this mean that any searches done when u are not logged in to ur account are not covered in this statement?

We do not sell ANY information acquired from our site in any way, shape or form. Wether you are a client or not or logged into your account or not.

I do not know how to make this any more clear.

 

[Source]

Richard,

Thanks Richard for stepping in and starting this thread. I have used NC for years and have NEVER experienced any foul play on the part of NC. Additionally, I have experienced nothing but world-class support and competitive prices. Please keep up the good work and those high standards.

I do have one question... It is my understanding that NC uses the enom api / infrastructure to register domains for its clients. If this is the case, there are obvious chain of custody concerns regarding the data when a third party api is used. Richard could you shed some light on this and how NC can ensure the privacy of our search requests as they pass through the enom registry engine?

Thanks,

Steve

 

[Len]

Come on guy's this is getting ridiculous!!! Richard came on here and explained to the doubter's that his company, Namecheap, does not supply any info about searches etc. to anyone...Period!!
Why people are looking for conspiracies and underhanded dealing is beyond me!! There are millions of people all over the globe doing searches every minute of every day. Do you think it is not possible that other's are searching for the exact name you are?... Of course they are...There have been many, many times when I have seen another Npr'er asking for an appraisal on a name I had been thinking about or had previously checked. Do you think they have secretly been given info about my searches on namecheap or moniker??...Do you really think if I reg'd a name this afternoon, that you had checked this morning with Namecheap, that I may have had some inside info about your check??
This is way too ridiculous to contemplate..... IMHO I think Richard has explained his companies position and that should be the end of it.

 

[champ_rock]

Come on guy's this is getting ridiculous!!! Richard came on here and explained to the doubter's that his company, Namecheap, does not supply any info about searches etc. to anyone...Period!!
Why people are looking for conspiracies and underhanded dealing is beyond me!! There are millions of people all over the globe doing searches every minute of every day. Do you think it is not possible that other's are searching for the exact name you are?... Of course they are...There have been many, many times when I have seen another Npr'er asking for an appraisal on a name I had been thinking about or had previously checked. Do you think they have secretly been given info about my searches on namecheap or moniker??...Do you really think if I reg'd a name this afternoon, that you had checked this morning with Namecheap, that I may have had some inside info about your check??
This is way too ridiculous to contemplate..... IMHO I think Richard has explained his companies position and that should be the end of it.

Absolutely agreed. Atleast Richard clarified his company's position himself. Otherwise I am quite sure that if u ask the same query to some other company then u will probably get a pre-rehearsed reply from another customer representative.

Also, I myself have noticed the same thing . infact i do most of the searches directly through through internic so i dont think they can be tapped or anything. but still some names eventually get registered by other people.

 

[Dave_Z]

Why people are looking for conspiracies and underhanded dealing is beyond me!!

Oh, because people find it conveniently easier to believe such. That's how it
is for some.

Good of you to start this, Richard. Hope you don't mind I blog about it too.

 

[-Raja-]

There are millions of people all over the globe doing searches every minute of every day. Do you think it is not possible that other's are searching for the exact name you are?... Of course they are...There have been many, many times when I have seen another Npr'er asking for an appraisal on a name I had been thinking about or had previously checked. Do you think they have secretly been given info about my searches on namecheap or moniker??..

yes i agree, there are coincedence's.

 

[iWhois.com]

Clarification from iWhois.com

Hi. I’m Andrew Moulden, Managing Director of Site Engineering Ltd, the company that owns iWhois.com. Thanks to Richard for pointing me to this thread.

He’s highlighting a problem which now seems to have reached epidemic proportions and threatens to undermine trust in all whois services and registrars, including the honest ones. So I would like to clarify our position.

iWhois.com does not write searched domains to a database. Nor do we extract such data from the server logfiles, either through automated or manual means. We take great care even over logfiles, which while they record URLs of the form http://iwhois.com/whateverdomain.all may be accessed only by me personally, and only for purposes of recording daily website traffic. Logfiles are also emptied daily.

So we have never and will never either register any domains searched at iWhois.com ourselves or pass any information about searched domains to any third party. iWhois.com is very popular among domainers, and so it would be a particular violation of trust were we to ever act otherwise.

Also, no data is passed to companies to which we link from whois output pages (eg. Sedo, NetSol, Snapnames, or even our own domain reseller www.namiac.com) until such time as you might click through from iWhois.com to the other website. So iWhois searches are self-contained, except of course for the relevant registry or registries.

I hope this is sufficiently unequivocal, but if you have any questions I’ll check back later and will happily answer them.

Thanks,
Andrew

 

[iWhois.com]

Double post - removed.

Double post - removed.

 

[seeker]

you know, it would not be too difficult to actually test this.
Lets say 5 people are selected from this board. We all come up with a few decent .coms
we can actually test it out at different registrars (using different names) and see the results.
I have never had any problem with NC (which is great BTW), nor iwhois.
I have had serious 'problems' or 'coincidences' (depending on your experience/stand on this issue) with Godaddy and whois.sc
I find a decent name, wait for 24 hours, and voila, its regged for tasting. Thats in my book more than just a coincidence.
Never had this problem at NC, or Moniker.
Also, I dont think that this is an epidemic, especialy not to NC or iwhois. I dont know how many people actually have had 'strange coincidences' happen there, but I havent heard that many stories if any at all over the years. Godaddy and whois.sc on the other hand... now that is a story that has been heard for quiet some time.
again, it could be a coincidence, until proven we reallhy can't say otherwise. But in my book, when a coincidence keeps repeating itself within specified parameters, it ceases to be a coincidence and begins to look like a fact.

Thanks Richard and Andrew for contributing here.

 

[canswift]

I have never had any problem with NC (which is great BTW), nor iwhois.
I have had serious 'problems' or 'coincidences' (depending on your experience/stand on this issue) with Godaddy and whois.sc
I

Hmm, isn't whois.sc now called DomainTools.com? Rats, I've been doing a lot of name research on DomainTools because I believed that it wasn't one of the "leakier" whois...