Top stories from the domain name business in June 2020.

Here’s a look back at what happened in the domain name business last month. These were five of the top stories on Domain Name Wire:

1. Intel and Metlife terminate their top level domains – Two more big companies have bowed out of the new top level domain program.

2. Registrars: remove phone numbers from Whois – A plea to domain name registrars to save their customers from annoying phone calls, texts and spam emails…

3. Big news: GoDaddy starts redacting Whois information – …speaking of which, GoDaddy has begun masking most information in Whois. It’s now trying to sell customers on protecting their domains from theft instead of buying Whois privacy, which is no longer needed. In case you’re wondering, here’s how spammers find domains to mine.

4. GoDaddy plans layoffs and is closing Austin offices – The pandemic hasn’t been as bad as expected for GoDaddy. However, it’s still laying off a lot of employees and reorganizing outbound sales. Its do-it-for-me social media product has been hit especially hard.

5. Why this odd domain received 227 bids at auction – Usage of these seemingly-random characters might hint at the bidding activity.

Are these domains unstoppable? – I interview Brad Kam, co-founder of Unstoppable Domains, about the pros and cons of its alt-root domains and if there are downsides to “uncensorable” domains.

Security report names domain registrar – Eric Poyton, a security researcher with Awake, discusses his company’s findings of a malware network in which offending domains were all registered through one ICANN-accredited registrar.

Stealing the keys to the internet – Ryan Estrada discusses his crime-caper podcast about ICANN as well as an expired domain story.

The Great Domain Theft – The owner of Tobacco.com talks about how he got the stolen domain back.

The Handshake alternative – Mike Carson explains the registry service he’s creating for Handshake.