Contact information made private after domain expires.
GoDaddy.com has started masking contact information in whois records of expired domains in an effort to prevent people from circumventing auctions and bothering domain owners.
The move, which the company announced today, is aimed at cutting down on email domain investors send to owners of expired domains. Domain investors see an expired domain auction for a domain they want and then contact the owner directly rather than competing in an auction.
This is a smart practice for domain investors as it often means they can get a domain for a lot less money than competing with dozens of other investors in an auction.
It can be good for the domain owner who makes money but bad for the auction service such as GoDaddy.
For its part, GoDaddy says it’s making the change to prevent people from harassing the current domain owner with so many emails: “Based on customer complaints, many investors participate in this practice, and some even hire outsourced teams.”
Of course, savvy domain investors can use DomainTools‘ historical whois to find out who the owner is. Many domain registrars already change the whois records upon expiration, and historical whois records are a goldmine for finding out who the owner is.
But this whois change will likely cut down on the apparent massive volume of email sent to owners of expired domains.
I’ve never had this happen for domains I own at GoDaddy. But I guess if I let them expire then they’re truly bad names.
The whois change won’t prevent people from transferring domains to another registrar during the expiration process. The whois will be reverted if the registrant requests the transfer authorization code.
“The move, which the company announced today, is aimed at cutting down on email domain investors send to owners of expired domains.”
The move is aimed to protect the godaddy cash cow and deprive owners from the money that they should be getting for their expired domains.”
Godaddy is not worried about a customer they are about to steal a domain name from.
If godaddy was so worried about the customer put a credit for half the sale price as a credit in the customers account, Got you, April Fools!
Screwing the customer … The new customer service.
How they can possibly call this a positive for domain owners is beyond me.
The only complaints I can even begin to imagine would be from domain owners who by mistake let their domains expire, only to find out after the fact that the domain name had been sold at auction.
And of course this won’t really make any difference to anyone really in the business of buying domains anyway. It will just screw the mom’s and pop’s like normal.
Part of the issue is that they auction the domains so early. You’ve still got time to renew it after you see how valuable it is.
Adam, true that.
I’ll say this, GoDaddy really used that excuse as to their reasoning, is BS. They don’t give a damn. If they really cared for the customer, they wouldn’t have auctioned the domain, they should just renew the domain for the customer…
Instead, GoDaddy really, wants to protect bidders who end up bidding a domain so high, that the money that was bid, is at stake, because if all of a sudden, the auction bidder wants to bail out, they just have to contact the registrant and tell them to renew it, without having to tell them any further details regarding the auction, etc. It’s likely that the domain holder wouldn’t event know that their domain was on auction to begin with.
Even if the domain registrant responds and says, “ohh, I don’t care about that domain”, the auction winner can still say, “but did you know that your domain received high value bid… – so you should renew and keep it because then you can make a lot of money …. WOW!!!”
I would recommend also disable to change whois information (those that are masked) once is domain unpaid and expired, allowed any updates just in good standing status.
or… you could just not let your domain expire
Ron that guys name isn’t Keith 🙂 and I’ll give you $251 for the name 😉
It wasn’t that long ago, if my memory is correct… a domainer had his Godaddy Auctions account suspended because he purchased a domain name that was expired and on auction, directly from the customer!
I am 99.9% sure there was nothing in the TOS that stated or prevented something like this from happening. Let a lone to prove the whole.. “I saw it on auction, contacted the owner and purchased it”.
In the end, I think Godaddy is sadly only thinking of profits here and NOT the customer! They only get around $90 for a late renewal and if the auction ended for $x,xxx or often times higher, it is clear why they are trying to hide whois data!
or… you could just not let your domain expire
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It’s great news for auction winners.
I was getting tired of winning a domain at auction, only to have it snatched away, even closeout auctions.
Believe me, I have complained plenty to Godaddy about this.
It won’t stop renewals from happening, but it may slow them down.
Better yet if Godaddy would just wait until day 35 after expiration to auction domains.
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Someone should round up the kfx.com owner Evergreen Energy Inc.. The bid is up to $3,005 and closes 12/3. Regged in 1994.
I was getting tired of winning a domain at auction, only to have it snatched away, even closeout auctions.
It’s a step in the right direction…
Good news for domain auction, I love it
Part of the issue is that they auction the domains so early. You’ve still got time to renew it after you see how valuable it is.
They only get around $90 for a late renewal and if the auction ended for $x,xxx or often times higher, it is clear why they are trying to hide whois data!
Someone should round up the kfx.com owner Evergreen Energy Inc.. The bid is up to $3,005 and closes 12/3. Regged in 1994.
Good news for domain auction, I love it so much
I was getting tired of winning a domain at auction, only to have it snatched away, even closeout auctions.
Part of the issue is that they auction the domains so early. You’ve still got time to renew it after you see how valuable it is.
I was getting tired of winning a domain at auction, only to have it snatched away, even closeout auctions.
or… you could just not let your domain expire
Enough is enough!! I have never seen a company get away with so much unethical behavior and flagrant disrespect in my entire life. If any other business, say, a car rental company, behaved anything like GoDaddy in terms of their ethics and customer service… they’d be out of business in a matter of months.
The only reason GoDaddy is able to survive is because their business works on a “subscription” basis, so they’re able to keep even the customers who hate them due purely to customer apathy (as well as some questionable business practices, or so some say).
DON’T BE ONE OF THEM!!
FYI: There will be a mass GoDaddy BOYCOTT next month – November 2014. This is your chance to sick it to these bullies.