38 spam calls in four days

This is what happens when you register a domain name without Whois privacy or redaction.

I’ve written a lot lately about the robocalls and telemarketing calls you get after registering a domain that doesn’t have redacted Whois information.

Over the past month or two, the volume of robocalls I get has decreased substantially. But when I accidentally registered some domains with public Whois information a week or two ago, the onslaught began.

Last week was particularly bad. It was frustrating because I was busy painting and managing a remodel of my house, so I had to pay attention when my phone rang or dinged.

I received 38 such calls from Monday through Thursday last week. The high point was Monday with 13 calls. On a “new” normal day, I get just one or two spam calls, so almost all of the recent calls can be attributed to the domain registrations.

This is in addition to many SMS ads every day. I deleted most of them but was receiving 5-6 per day.

So my phone was being hit 10-15 times a day due to domain registrations.

My experience is not abnormal. Domain name registrars that do not redact phone numbers are allowing their customers to be barraged with unwanted solicitations.

The pool of spam targets is smaller now that GoDaddy is redacting information. That means that customers of registrars that aren’t redacting are going to receive even more solicitations.