Godaddy blocks Whois info from Whois Service Providers

[Infoproliferati]

About 2 days ago I checked a whois at DomainTools. The only information displayed was the registrants name and the domain residing server. Same thing happened yesterday. Curious, I checked the whois for some of my names. All my information was displayed including contact info.

As of today though, all my names display just a reg name and dns. Other Whois providers display the same standard. While Net Sol does the same, it doesn't block contact information from all whois providers. I suppose there could be any number of reasons why GoDaddy is doing this. I guess its a strategy to draw traffic to Godaddy while protecting domain owner information in kind.

Godaddy seems to be taking a page from Google and Facebook. Is this good for the average domainer?

[gpmgroup]

Is this good for the average domainer?

I think so.

There are serious issues with their scraping of WHOIS within European jurisdictions. Look at how DomainTools handles .co.uk and .eu domains. There are also associated issues with their scraping of web content - DomainTools for example - we've found them not to honour robot.txt directives.

There are a number of serious issues on associating domain ownership from more than a single WHOIS lookup at a given point in time.

Historical WHOIS for example should be authoritative and subject to various legal requirements. For example one of the main reasons for WHOIS privacy is the safety of the website owner especially for contentious subject matters. Most users are not even aware of scraper services like DomainTools and how they are combining the data they scrape, therefore what happens if a Women's Refuge Center registers a domain in their own name and then converts to privacy before the site goes live?

Another problem is aggregating of all the domains someone owns. For example the previous owner was bragging that he could determine new products before the official announcements from companies from newly registered domains. This sought of thing just casts the whole domain industry in a bad light.

[taboo]

DomainTools will be out of business as soon as Verisign amends their TOS to forbid the reselling of user data to third party marketing operations.

[CureCancer]

DomainTools will be out of business as soon as Verisign amends their TOS to forbid the reselling of user data to third party marketing operations.

About time.

[katherine]

DomainTools will be out of business as soon as Verisign amends their TOS to forbid the reselling of user data to third party marketing operations.

Isn't that already disallowed ?

[DomainsInc]

DomainTools will be out of business as soon as Verisign amends their TOS to forbid the reselling of user data to third party marketing operations.

that will seriously hamper sales i would imagine. just think of it, having to use so many different websites just to look up whois info...

[David G]

that will seriously hamper sales i would imagine. just think of it, having to use so many different websites just to look up whois info...

Just use GoDaddy Whois lookups so you have the GD 50% plus market share covered, plus the other registrars info too. That way you won't have to deal with smaller registrars not having access to Godaddy.

[jessem]

I noticed this too on domaintools. It is a pain to have to go to GD everytime. Oh well. Domaintools new redesign probably wont help their popularity either.

[lilian]

I think It's a good step for domainers.