GoDaddy has redacted personal information in Whois records for all customers.
Effective today, GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) has begun redacting personal information in Whois records for customers worldwide for eligible top level domains.
The move makes Whois records uniform for customers in all locations. Previously, the company only redacted personal information for people who were covered under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDRP).
Whois records now show only the Registrant Organization, state/province, and country.
GoDaddy VP of Domain Registrar Paul Bindel explained to Domain Name Wire that customers who have purchased private Whois registrations will have the option of upgrading or getting a pro-rated refund.
The company will send an email to impacted customers shortly that will be offer an upgrade to GoDaddy’s Full Domain Privacy & Protection. This service includes added protection against expiration due to an invalid credit card, two-factor authorization for domain transfers, and security monitoring.
Customers who don’t opt-out of the upgrade within 30 days will get the Full service for the same price they were paying for Domains by Proxy.
If they opt-out, they’ll get a pro-rated refund of what they paid for the privacy service.
Domain investors and other domain registrants who want their contact details to be made public will be allowed to do so through a function in their account. (This functionality will roll out over the next couple of weeks).
People will still be able to contact domain owners through a form on GoDaddy’s Whois pages.
The change does not apply to top level domains that don’t allow Whois privacy, such as .us.
Increasing privacy regulations made this move inevitable. Most domain name registrars redacted information for all customers when GDPR went into effect.
While this change is likely to cause a revenue hit for GoDaddy, it will also drastically improve customer experience. Spammers and telemarketers harvest Whois data and then inundate domain registrants with sales pitches.
There are lots of good points for and against.
The most compelling, to me, is that you have an ability to forward your domain to a ‘for sale’ page. I don’t see how blocking whois will meaningfully hinder sales from a domainer perspective…
On the other side, I’ve been asked by ‘pro’ domainers if my “whois was correct”, so that either:
a) They could use any falsification against me.
b) Threaten “be at your house on the 5th to fight for it”.
I seen first hand, that it is DOMAINING whom uses WHOIS against registrants more than ANYONE.
This is all recorded and admitted on popular domaining forum. Domaining really out of control IMO. Real double standards, depending on the type of domains you own, weather or not ‘rules’ get enforced. Get laughed at and called a ‘dead rat’ if I report to FBI for such terrorist threats. Really sick, that their ‘pro’ pets can apparently get away threats of violence. GoDaddy says ENOUGH.
Very sad this industry uses selective enforcement, based on their own agendas to manage our domains, our ability to speak up, and even our safety.
“Domain investors and other domain registrants who want their contact details to be made public will be allowed to do so through a function in their account. (This functionality will roll out over the next couple of weeks).”
This option should already be available!
It is in some accounts already. Should be in the others soon.
Now neither spammers nor domain buyers this is silly, in UNI it is such equally tremendous all the UNI Whois is Godaddy is horrible what a million dollar acquisition for no facility just complicate everything.
In India, there is no restriction on displaying WHOIS details, however our WHOIS details for all the domains is hidden by Godaddy.
Moreover, We domain holders, haven’t received any official information on hiding WHOIS info from Godaddy yet.
1. What about .us domains?
2. Even if it’s the same for .us domains, how do they appear (ones at GoDaddy, that is) at whois.us?
I can’t tell since I no longer have any at GoDaddy.
Read the article again.
Well I came here after commenting at Elliot’s on this and didn’t actually read yours. My bad.
GoDaddy, complete joke. Anyone or any business that uses this scam gets what they deserve.
Almost as bad as inmotion.hosting
The important thing is that American citizens and businesses still have no right of privacy with their own country code domain since 2002, .us.
Good thing that’s still the case. Wouldn’t want that.