discuss The ’Whois’ is dead. Is there an alternative?

[Emil K.]

Yes, 'Whois', unfortunately, gone with the wind. I do not understand why?!

However, the question arises: what now?

How can a potential buyer verify or establish who owns a domain name?

I consider that abolishing 'Whois’ done great damage to the domain names trade and to legal security.

I believe that domain owners who wanted to be protected from harassment could do so through Privacy Protection, so no additional protection was necessary.

 

[EmpireNames.com]

Yes, 'Whois', unfortunately, gone with the wind. I do not understand why?!

However, the question arises: what now?

How can a potential buyer verify or establish who owns a domain name?

I consider that abolishing 'Whois’ done great damage to the domain names trade and to legal security.

I believe that domain owners who wanted to be protected from harassment could do so through Privacy Protection, so no additional protection was necessary.

i think this is in favor of marketplaces. i saw a lot of times that customer see some domain in gd buy it now and then they find them through whois and deal with owner directly and owner sell to buyer cheaper and save commission this is the main reason i think.
maybe i am wrong but all marketplaces will have benefit because of this.

 

[Emil K.]

i think this is in favor of marketplaces. i saw a lot of times that customer see some domain in gd buy it now and then they find them through whois and deal with owner directly and owner sell to buyer cheaper and save commission this is the main reason i think.
maybe i am wrong but all marketplaces will have benefit because of this.

This is certainly one of the explanations.
Marketplaces want to significantly reduce the possibility of direct bargaining between buyers and sellers and participate themselves to as many transactions as possible.

 

[garptrader]

For domain owners who are interested in selling, a landing page such as Efty can bypass marketplace commissions and allow buyers to establish contact with the domain owner.

 

[simran.net]

I think lot of spams brought such decision

 

[imadoer]

There is. Gotta get your hunt on to find the solution

 

[Bob Hawkes]

A couple off brief comments.

(1) Elliot did a post on closely related to your question a few weeks ago. It has some good ideas. Post at link below.
Proving Ownership After GDPR

(2) I used ICANN Whois yesterday to check on a domain name and was surprised that the full address information showed. It was a domain name held by a Canadian, but in .com, and I am Canadian, so GDPR does not directly apply. Then I looked up some of my recent registrations at Alp and they also show (Namecheap ones not and .ca not since I am listed as individual not business). So some whois still works? Thanks for any information from those who have followed this more than me.

I agree with those who have said that marketplaces that offer embedded escrow will become the main transaction places, particularly those run by the registrars themselves since they know the registration information for the transaction.

 

[treasure28]

I think lot of spams brought such decision

Especially from the Indian web design and Seo guys.

 

[alex067]

I use hunter.io to find emails for outbounds

although I do not have the experience nor sold via outbound (yet), hunter.io gives you emails of ceo's, partners, vice presidents etc. of that business

 

[Domainstore]

@Emil K. @MetBob The GDPR is a new law in the European Union.
I contacted several European Parliament members of my country, and explained
what the problem is. IT's holiday, but I gues that in september they're all working again, and this problem is an unexpected consequence of the new law (GDPR went into practice 25/5/18). The actual reason for the law is to protect the European citizens privacy. This would mean that the DEFAULT setting should be "private" (instead in the past : public). HOWEVER THIS HAS THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE THAT SEVERAL REGISTRARS CAN'T FIND THE OWNERS OF DOMAINNAMES and even websites because a sudden PRIVACY WHOIS-PROBLEM. THIS IS A MAJOR PROBLEM I already talked about to Godaddy : They get enormous much mails phonecalls from major corporations and domainers about it

WHAT WE NOW WANT (and isn't the case for the moment) IS THAT PRIVACY CAN BE THE DEFAULT SETTING LIKE EU wants, and is the default setting for European woners, BUT THAT THE INTENTION SHOULD BE THAT THE (European) PERSON WHO REGISTRARS A DOMAINNAME SHOULD HAVE "THE POSSIBILITY" TO "WAVE""/OR "NOT WANT THAT PRIVACY", BY A SYSTEM OF "OPTING OUT", in domainregistations (this can be easily fixed by registrars, to put the possibility to opt out for all your registrations, or for some registrations. This For economical reasons and also for safetyreasons. Always registrars in the past told us to buy privacy, scaring us that hackers and spammers CAN use the whoisinformation.
(Some registrars have already such a system, but strictly it's not legal.

BUT I ADVICE TO EVERY EUROPEAN DOMAINER TO CONTACT IT'S EMP'S (European member of Parliament) TO WARN THEM ABOUT THIS STUPID PROBLEM AND THAT AN AMMENDMENT SHOULD BE MADE TO THIS NEW LAW. I THINK THEY EVENTUALLY WILL DO THAT. BUT THIS WILL TAKE A WHILE, AND THE BUEREAUCRATIC MILL WIL TAKE PROBABALY HALF A YEAR TOSOLVE THIS PROBLEM.
BUT YOU CAN DO SOMETHIN ABOUT IT.
OVER DIFFERENT PARTIES OF MY COUNTRY I ALREADY HEARD THAT IS WHAT WE CALL A "CHILDSHOEPROBLEM" OF A NEW LAW. SO A UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE OF A NEW LAW, THAT BETTER SHOULD BE AMMENDED TO CHANGE THE ERRORS OR WIPES OUT THE NOT INTENDED CONSEWUENCES that suddenly restricken something what not should be the case.

ANYHOW I'LL COME BACK TO THIS WITH A PROPOSITIONLETTER OR EMAIL TO YOUR EMP's AND WHERE YOU CAN FIND THEM (by fax telefphone, email) AND WHERE their kabinets are.

 

[simran.net]

Especially from the Indian web design and Seo guys.

I got spams for my whois email id many times regardless of country. Many from china & eu also.

With in 7 days of registration of domains, the appraisal, seo, designing, buyer scams continues.

 

[MadAboutDomains]

This would mean that the DEFAULT setting should be "private" (instead in the past : public). HOWEVER THIS HAS THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE THAT SEVERAL REGISTRARS CAN'T FIND THE OWNERS OF DOMAINNAMES and even websites because a sudden PRIVACY WHOIS-PROBLEM.

@Domainstore I personally think that you're thinking about this the wrong way. The registries need to provide a mechanism to enable "verification of ownership" that doesn't involve making your personal details available to the public.

It's not up to the EU to reduce the protections that they've provided to EU citizens. The public whois details that can be changed at will is not a defacto way of verifying ownership, as has been demonstrated numerous times before by scam sales of stolen domains.

The least that the registries should do is to provide a back end mechanism for verifying ownership instead of their dumb public whois method. Not everything has to be public for it to work properly.

Perhaps EU citizens don't want just anyone to verify their ownership of a domain, I don't know why they would. That sounds OK to me. Maybe verification of ownership, should be initiated only by the domain holder.

Further to this, registrars have long been creaming in the cash for "privacy services", holding your privacy to ransom. Now things are going the right way you want it to be reverted. Perhaps it is bureaucratic, but it was ICANN that refused to comply in good time, they were given plenty of warnings, each time they were just trying to circumvent the rules or have exceptions to the rules devised just for them and the EU said NO! https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/06/europe_no_to_icann_whois/

Maybe you should direct your letters to them instead!