What To Do When Buyers Don't Update Whois?

[JuniperPark]

I'm suddenly getting flooded with email confirmation requests and expiration notices for domains I sold years ago via a certain large domain name brokerage.

I don't know what that brokerage tells buyers, but it appears that nearly every buyer has kept MY whois information in all 4 contacts for the domains. I have no way of knowing who the buyer is, so I'm stuck.

This causes a lot of problems --- first of all, if the domain owner does something illegal or even spammy, I'm going to be blamed as the "registered owner". Second, it increases my spam. I've been getting a flood of spam about Dubai real estate, and I had no idea why. It turns out a domain I sold is redirected to a Dubai real estate site. Third, the buyer is not going to receive the expiration notice.

So... what should I do? Should I attempt to recover the domains, since they are "registered" to me? Should I file an "invalid whois" complaint, which could result in the domain being dropped? Should I just let expiring domains expire, and deal with the wrath of an angry buyer who had no warning?

 

[vivid]

I had a similar issue after selling several names at one domain sales platform, the buyer was the same for all the names, though he bought them in different time frames. After receiving a few unwanted emails, I asked sales representatives to contact the buyer with the request to update the whois info – they did, but the info still wasn't updated. I was also thinking about filing an invalid whois complaint, but didn't actually want this to cause domain name registration termination for the buyer – and that could to, as the buyer's registrar was known for doing this even for less significant whois data issues in the past (e.g. just a wrong phone number). So I still haven't addressed this, and this got out of my focus for a while.

In my opinion, if you consider your situation troublesome, then you should probably go further than me and report this to the registrar. But I would never attempt to recover a domain that I have already sold – that doesn't look to be an appropriate response to the situation, and I'm not sure that it's legal at all, ethical part aside.

 

[JuniperPark]

I know the issue is with at least a couple dozen domains at many different registrars, so it would take some time.

A while back a buy let a domain drop, and I caught it through a drop catch service and offered to give it back to him, and he was angry about that as if I were the one that screwed up.

 

[vivid]

It looks quite surprising that so many buyers do not care about their acquisitions – unless that's an intentional strategy on low end names. I thought this to be an exceptional situation – though it's hard to judge about the scale of this without knowing the size of this troublesome fraction in the overall picture. As to catching the dropped name, while there's no a particular issue with that, it looks a bit risky to approach the previous buyer with it, as you can easily get accused as you have described by an unsavvy outsider in domain industry. At the same time, I know that many domain investors would give the caught name to the unlucky ex-owner at the mere acquisition price, when being asked nicely about that – such situations are usually rare, and maintaining good relationships is important – yet you might not want to in the case you are bringing up .

 

[draggar]

You can always report the fake whois information to ICANN / the registrar - and continue to do so after each one is closed until they do.

 

[JuniperPark]

I filed 25 whois disputes last night, and 3 have fixed their WHOIS already... seems like it was a good move.

 

[Fabulous.com]

Hello JuniperPark,

As a registrar, Fabulous would first confirm the details are incorrect and then work with the domain owner to update this.

Of course, you can always submit a Whois Inaccuracy Complaint Form with ICANN.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Fabulous Support.
([email protected])

 

[JuniperPark]

Hello JuniperPark,

As a registrar, Fabulous would first confirm the details are incorrect and then work with the domain owner to update this.

Of course, you can always submit a Whois Inaccuracy Complaint Form with ICANN.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Fabulous Support.
([email protected])

Yep, that's how it SHOULD be done.... assuming the registrar has any information on who the buyer is, rather than just another copy of my own contact info.

 

[JuniperPark]

As a test, I filed ICANN complaints against 25 of the 100 or so people using my WHOIS. Supposedly all were given 15 days warning to correct it or lose the domain. Of course those notices came to ME, not sure if they went to any other addresses. After 10 days, only 5 have corrected their info. We'll see what happens next week.