Internet marketer selling access to whois data.
Many people are selling cheap access to whois information culled from recently registered domain names. Now an internet marketer is getting into the act.
A new service called FreshDomainLeads.com promises members daily sales leads in the form of whois records of newly registered domain names.
A video for the service says it provides ‘legal access’ to the bulk information and that ‘domain name registration info is public by law’.
I think they’re using ‘legal’ and ‘law’ loosely here, but the collection and sale of this data for marketing purposes seems to violates a lot of Terms of Service.
Based on the demo video, it looks like the system might only pull in data from registries operating a thick whois, meaning the data is stored by the registry rather than the registrar.
One pitch video claims that these leads are great for affiliates to push services like webhosting, web design, and internet marketing. In other words: more unsolicited email.
The FreshDomainLeads.com domain name was registered by Xodo Inc. Xodo Inc is a new Jersey company organized by Andrzej Madloch. The business later filed an assumed name as Cody Moya, a popular internet marketing products promotor.
The sales page pulls all the tricks from internet marketing sales letters, including a countdown clock for an imminent price price increase. Of course, once the countdown clock hits zero, it just resets.
If there’s any consolation for domain name registrants tired of being bombarded with spam, to software limits users to 100 whois contacts per day.
@domains says
I continually get spam from Australia, China and India with web hosting, web design etc offers for domains I have registered. It’s a pain in the A**. You know they have just gotten your info from Whois scraping.
Acro says
They read the zone files; it also happens when you let domains expire for a few days and renew them.
DomainDx says
I always wondered how services like DomainTools or Whoisology obtain their whois data.
In essence, aren’t they violating the Terms of Service too? (if you make a whois query to any .com, it says “You further agree
not to use this data to enable high volume, automated or robotic electronic
processes designed to collect or compile this data for any purpose,
including mining this data for your own personal or commercial purposes.”).
Is there something I am missing?
Andrew Allemann says
Those services don’t really concern me. They aren’t selling bulk info to spammers.
Anil Kumar says
It is difficult for the registries to find people who violate the terms of the zone file agreement. The entity that does data mining may not be the same as the one that has the zone file access.
The centralized zone data service (CZDS) doesn’t allow the use of zone data for any marketing purposes.
“…Not to use this Data, nor permit this Data to be used for any marketing purposes whatsoever.”
the above part is missing from some of the other registry agreements.
All zone file agreements have this..
“…under no circumstances will you use this Data to: (1) allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission by e-mail, telephone, or facsimile of mass unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations to entities other than your own existing customers”
Value added products are allowed.
“except that you may redistribute the Data insofar as it has been incorporated by you into a value-added product or service that does not permit the extraction of a substantial portion of the Data from the value-added product or service”
I do process and publish some data from zone files for free (but absolutely no whois lookups or registrant data collection)
Jay says
Flag it as spam and contact the affiliate programs as generally the affiliate code will have a tracker in it. I’ve gotten a few affiliates canned from popular ridesharing programs by going direct to the programs with spam complaints.
Goran Duskic says
Exactly! At least that’s what I do.
Ross says
Whois needs a revamp. I actually want people to contact me re domain purchase discussions and it would be great if there were options allowing me to specifiy of I want service enquiries or purchase enquiries. Whois privacy doesn’t meet these needs as emails are still forwarded to the registrant.
ICANN’s own whois guidelines (https://whois.icann.org/en/what-whois-data-used) state in point 7:
“To contact a domain name registrant for the purpose of discussing and negotiating a secondary market transaction related to a registered domain name.”
Market transaction can cover many items.
Goran Duskic says
Unfortunately whois needs a revamp for at least a decade… And again unfortunately, every time a discussion rises, it feels, like you hit a vespiary, and then everybody leaves it alone. (Some may argue, and here comes that vespiary thing, that something is changing).
Here we are 2016, new gTLDs coming in, and whois riding like it’s the eighties.