Domain registrar displays customers’ whois lookups for all to see.
Here’s an interesting new “feature” on Network Solutions’ web site: a list of domain name whois searches performed by customers in the past day.
That’s right. Do a whois lookup on Network Solutions and you can tip your hat to thousands of onlookers.
Think of all of the fun things you could do with this information:
…Figure out domains people are looking to buy and beat them to it
…Find out if a lawyer is looking up whois information, potentially to file a UDRP case
…Register alternative TLDs of the domains people are looking up…they’re obviously interesting domains
To make things easier, you can subscribe to the Network Solutions whois lookup RSS feed. You can also see a list of the most-searched whois records.
Ten bucks says the marketing team came up with this idea.
Jamie Zoch says
Wow! Not sure why NSI does stuff like this but I’m sure it will piss off some people. For now, I’m going to track the data while it is still up 🙂
Jason at GoDrops.com says
OMG… NSI just opened up their front-running service to everyone =) =P
Domain Investor says
It appears only the domains in NSI are displayed.
Not domains that are with other registrars.
Nothing like betraying your customers trust by displaying customers’ data.
Could someone put in the suggestion box for NSI to display domain names that are searched but not registered?
Andrew Allemann says
@ Domain Investor – Good observation. Since .com is a “think registry”, I’m not surprised that NetSol is only showing its domains. If it showed others, it would be relating data from a competing registrar’s whois database.
John Berryhill says
This seems to be motivated as a selling point for their “sell advertising in your whois” service, rather than some nefarious plot.
Andrew Allemann says
“This seems to be motivated as a selling point for their “sell advertising in your whois” service, rather than some nefarious plot.”
Agree. “Good” intentions, but the data is now there for the taking.
Domain Investor says
John, Yes, I noticed that. But, that doesn’t make it correct.
John Berryhill wears size 12 shoes.
If John doesn’t want everyone to know he wears size 12 shoes, he has to buy privacy from NSI.
I also noticed that the data displayed is probably 12 to 24 hours delayed.
jp says
Geesh, This strikes me as a bad idea for netsol. Somebody I sure to sue them over it eventually.
Johnny says
Once a scummy company, always a scummy company.
Domain Investor says
The domain owners with Netsol gave permission for the information to be published in the TOS.
Legally – they are ok.
Ethical – iffy.
PR/customer service – terrible.
Shashi Bellamkonda says
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your post and I just wanted to clarify that information from our domain search box, which is used by customers to buy new domains, is not part of this feed. Our WHOIS is generally used by people to find the publicly available information on domain names and not necessarily by people who want to buy domain names so I think your statement “Register alternative TLDs of the domains people are looking up…they’re obviously interesting domains” may not apply here. No marketing involved here. Hope you will clarify that to your audience.
Thanks
Shashi Bellamkonda
Network Solutions
Andrew Allemann says
@ Shashi – My statement “Register alternative TLDs of the domains people are looking up…they’re obviously interesting domains” refers to registering alternative TLDs of a domain someone is looking up. If someone is running a whois on domain.com, then something is interesting about that domain: likely someone is interested in buying it or its a popular domain. So you can then register domain.net, domain.org etc.
mark says
It’s posts like this that continue to underscore how irrelevant domain name wire has become. I hate to be in a position to defend Network Solutions, but this isn’t any different than Twitter’s popular trends or Google Trends for that matter or any of the other countless feeds or apps out there.
Do you really honestly believe that the same marketing team that came up with nsWebAddress came up with something this useful? But rants aside, I think this is great feature.
I’ve been using this feed for a few months now when I discovered it and found that there are interesting trends, such as when Michael Jackson died, not only was Twitter alight with MJ topics, but there were queries being done into WHOIS as well.
As a domain investor, I find open and public data like this to be extremely useful. WHOIS is public data and all domain companies sell private registration – I don’t see why that even matters since the feed just shows the domain that was queried, not any of the data itself.
As their employee put it, they don’t do a feed of their domain search box, I don’t understand what the problem is. I haven’t noticed any available names popup on the feed either. Not only that, but people mine the zone file all of the time, so why would this matter? Doing a WHOIS query against a domain doesn’t necessarily increase the value of alternative TLDs or misspellings for that matter, but it could be one extra checkmark off on your list. People query WHOIS to see if their data has been updated all of the time so that does not establish value at all. Now if you notice a trend that’s a different story of course.
In my opinion, this is useful and for a change Network Solutions is doing something good for the domain community – it’s not like you’re forced to buy it there.
Thanks for reiterating why I barely follow this site anymore.
RaleighWebTeam says
@mark – I totally agree. I don’t see what the big deal is here. They are simply showing the most recent and most popular searches for public WHOIS data. I’d think people like @DomainInvestor could add this as just another tool for their research.
I think it’s feeds like their WHOIS feed that keep companys like Network Solutions active and engaged in the domain community.
Unfortunately it’s articles like this one that cause PR problems and may eventually force Network Solutions to remove this feature.
Make your WHOIS data private if you really care but don’t ruin this unique feature for the rest of us.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Raleigh Web Team – so how exactly are you using this data? How would its removal “ruin this unique feature for the rest of us”.
Donnie says
@andrew I don’t get what the issue is. It’s public data, this community benefits tremendously from such an open and public feed of anonymous data. Why are you being such a hater? I have a lot of respect for Domain Name Wire and am really wondering why you are poo-poo-ing such a great idea.
@RaleighWebTeam I hear you, I feel the same way. This is like those idiots at the town hall meetings about health care!
@Mark glad you were the first to defend other than their employee. I think this is a very valuable and unique service; the godaddy’s of the world are taking advantage of the domain community because of cheap prices but dont deserve any applause. they offer no valueadd at all other than cheap pricing. they’d never offer something this unique and interesting for free ironically. so let’s stop the hate and get back to doing what we do best!!!
Andrew Allemann says
Donnie – The whois data is public. I like public whois data. But the fact that I searched a particular whois record is not usually public information. I’d love to get a list of all of the whois searches performed at, say DomainTools. But they’d never hand that info over and I certainly wouldn’t search there if they would.
Donnie says
@andrew but why? SEriously what’s the difference between twitter feeds and this? Nothing. Except that it can potentially be a boon to our industry–and its free. If Network Solutions were selling the info then I could understand you discomfort but you’re basically saying that you can’t believe that Google uses search text to serve up ads. Give me a break and they’re not even serving up ads! I just don’t think you understand the power and cool factor this provides. How would we even know that you were searching vs. someone else? no way I can tell.
Andrew Allemann says
Donnie – if it was just aggregate stats like what Twitter or Google provides, that’s one thing. But individual searches is another. When AOL released its search data it wasn’t the fact that Brittney Spears was searched a lot that was interesting…it was the individual searches.
Alex Tajirian says
Without revealing their strategies, people like @mark are making domain name markets more efficient. That has social benefits.
Donnie says
And that made the Internet worse how? What super secrets were revealed? Was security compromised? How and why would something secure be sent to to AOL in the first place? What individual stats are revealed? That some anonymous person searched on “abc.com”? What does that matter? You’re saying its interesting and yet at the same time indicating that something unethical is happening, but you’re not proving your point at all. Your theory has more holes in it than swiss cheese, move on and admit that this is just silly.
Andrew Allemann says
Donnie – well, in the case of AOL it was easy to tie search terms together…you can read up on it.
Buy hey, it’s my opinion that releasing info about individual domains people searched on can be bad, and I provided three examples on my story. We don’t have to agree on this one.
Donnie says
No you’re right we don’t have to agree at all, but given that you are presenting yourself as journalistic you do need some fact-checking. Your three examples aren’t examples – they are assertions based on opinion:
1.) Was proved wrong, you have no proof available names that are searched are presented via this feed: in fact others chimed in to say they aren’t.
2.) There’s no real way to mine this data to determine that it’s a lawyer or any other individual completing the search – the searches are presented as anonymous 100%. So that too is not a real ‘example’.
3.) You’re right people could use this feed as a way of registering alternative TLDs, potentially. But has it had any more clout than the zone file or any other free data source out there, something maybe that domaintools provides? This being a news site for domaineers, you’d think the topic would have been brought up before but it hasn’t, kind of starts to make your point seem null and void huh?
I guess I’m hot and bothered because I don’t like people ranting as if something is skewed in one direction when it is only their opinion. This is an Op-Ed piece, make it so!
Andrew Allemann says
Donnie, a couple points. When I wrote “Figure out domains people are looking to buy and beat them to it”, I mean someone searches for the whois to contact the owner of the domain, so I swoop in to make an offer before they can. This is possible. I wasn’t referring to the domain search availability box, just whois.
As for the op-ed side, every thing is op-ed 🙂 TechCrunch, every domain news site, this site…we all have a slant. But you’re write, I’ve hit sarcasm pretty hard in this post.
But I must stop arguing, because I need to challenge Berryhill on his logo assertions 🙂
John Berryhill says
You guys are all missing the big story here.
Netsol has ditched their “broken gears” logo for something that looks like a printer status display for “paper jam”.
This is worse than that poor “under construction” digging man who used to be on millions of web sites and is now on unemployment.
Anthony Mitchell says
Privacy is not something that I’m merely entitled to, it’s an absolute prerequisite.-Marlon Brando.
Reading the comments on the article about EscrowDNS, it became apparent that self interest drives some people’s perceptions of right and wrong.
Somewhere in Texas, late at night, a man sits at his desk wondering if the rest of humanity has taken leave of its senses. I’m wondering too.
Sarah says
Our company found out the sites such as whoisxmlapi.com provided hosted API webservice, as well as a whois database and download with domain availability information of of which we found very useful.
These companies are great at providing whois data – phishing sites can simply be shut down. How can privacy be private when this whois data is public which companies such as these mining for public data…..
Sarah