No More WHOIS scams?

scholztec writes "It seems it's no longer necessary to have your personal information flapping in the breeze. Domains by Proxy will allow your private information to remain private. It's owned by the same people as Go Daddy Software. Basically, they provide a proxy ownership service, which means that their info goes in the WHOIS, but you still retain full rights to your domain. Of course, some people may miss the domain telemarketers, or those lovely renewal scam notices from VeriSign and Domain registry of America. Check out articles at: The Register, UDRPlaw, and Domain Name Essentials; or Go Daddy's press release (PDF format)."

Re:Am I the only one that has found this useful?

[orangesquid]

I have sometimes found it necessary to contact the owner of a domain---I saw a mention of proxying, but this whole idea still makes me a bit uneasy.

Re:Am I the only one that has found this useful?

[L-Train8]

Yes, and a webmaster can get useful info from Internet citizens from time to time. Stuff like "hey moron, you have an open mail proxy that spammers are using," or "hey you clueless jackass, you've been infected by code red, better patch!"

What is really needed is a spam filter, not an anonymizer.

What happened to the verisign inccurate whois?

[leuk_he]

/. reported in this [slashdot.org] article that verisign was urged to correct whois data. Anyone heard any response from verisign about false whois data?

patents and ownership

[nocent]

From the Register article:

Users of the service can have email sent to the address in the Whois forwarded to them, and can even have DBP act as a snail-mail proxy, for an additional fee. Parsons said the company has patents pending on the technology behind the service.

What technology would that be? The e-mail forwarding? The snail mail forwarding? E-mail forwarding of course is already done and any smart person would know not to put their everyday e-mail in the whois database. As for snail mail forwarding, places like Mailboxes etc have done that for years.

Another thing about this is the question of ownership. By not entering your own information into the database, they are legally the owners which means that you are at their mercy. Yes, of course they say they are just acting as your proxy but what happens if they go under? What happens if one day they decide that they'd like to keep your high traffic domain name for themselves?

Private Domains

[Vinum]

There are private domains already. .CX is for the country Christmas Island. They do not give out private info on anyone. Their privacy policy is pretty good and is here [www.nic.cx].

I love my .CX domains. To register one you go to www.netdns.cx [netdns.cx] and spend $37 for the first year. Then you spend $37 for every two years after that.

And yes, more website use .cx then that stupid goat guy. www.oralse.cx [oralse.cx] is one of the funniest sites around.

I haven't got any spam ever for the domains that I registered. This is better then the .COM proxy... because with the proxy ownership you don't really own the stinking domain! What happens if your site gets HUGE and they threaten you to start paying more or they take away your domain. :(

Spammers may use this to hide

[www.sorehands.com]

Spammers and other scam artists can use this to hide from people, but GoDaddy has a strong anti-SPAM policy:

Go Daddy also may in its sole discretion and without liability to you delete the registration of any domain name during the first thirty (30) days after registration has taken place. Go Daddy may also cancel the registration of a domain name, after thirty (30) days, if that name is being used in association with spam

Re:Spammers may use this to hide

[merlyn]

And who is the arbiter of that? How safe is a legitimate customer from false reports? Getting "joe jobbed" these days is becoming the sport of kings.

It's a constant battle between the people who would use your money to try to sell you something (spammers) and the people trying to protect you from same.

Hijacking (Re:Spammers may use this to hide)

[phorm]

Go Daddy may also cancel the registration of a domain name, after thirty (30) days, if that name is being used in association with spam

So what happens when they or somebody else decides to remove your domain ownership from you. All they have to do is forge a spam header or two and say you've been using it for spamming, then bye-bye domain. Heck, since they've got control of your domain, they could send proxy-spam and then shut you for it.

I'm not generally so paranoid, but I prefer to have certain control over what I pay for - phorm

Re:Spammers may use this to hide

[greenhide]

From the website:

But don't even think about using our services to transmit SPAM, violate the law or engage in morally objectionable activities.

Of course, they may not catch everyone trying to use their service for Spamming, but I imagine they'll be kicked off after one SpamCop report.

To clear up a few things

[scholztec]

I didn't put this in the post because it would've made it too long (and who wants to be left out of the Slashdot Omelette [slashdot.org]?): Everyone is nervous about the proxy ownership thing. When you buy the service, their agreement [domainsbyproxy.com] entitles you to full rights of ownership. There's no way for you to lose control over your domain, unless you do something stupid, like run a spam shop. They've got a great anti-spam policy [domainsbyproxy.com] that should keep out all the nasties trying to use the service. I did my homework before going in on this, and it looks to me like a great way to avoid all the crap (spam, marketing, etc..) that comes with a domain name. I can see that other people (like someone trying to run a family website, or someone trying to shake a stalker) would have an even better use for this. It's a heck of a lot better than using fake WHOIS data, since you can't get your domain taken away.

you might as well forget doing a traceroute

[mozkill]

well,

im not happy with the GoDaddy service at all. since my domain is by a proxy, I cant ping my domain name to get the ip of my machine.

i guess its my fault for not memorizing my ip address.

-jon
http://djangology.net

why not just .dk

[p0ppe]

The whois information for .dk domains can be complitely anonymized for private entities. Since the domains are sold at about $10 a year, I tend to believe that danish domains are quite superior to many others.

The only downside is that you have registering DNS's is quite expensive, but there are free DNS providers available (http://www.gratisdns.dk)

More info at http://www.dk-hostmaster.dk

Privacy Policy

[Xenkar]

I'll probably email them later today about the special circumstances regarding the release of my private information. I'll stick with PO boxes if they release the information for anything less than a court order. I don't want people to know exactly where I live. My life would be in danger if someone knew where I live. There are a ton of mentally disturbed people who would kill me in real life for killing them in some online game.

I'd rather drive a few miles every month to empty the trash out of my PO box than potentially go to sleep and never wake up due to someone placing a bomb outside my bedroom.

Re:Privacy Policy

[L-Train8]

I seriously doubt that there are a ton of mad bombers out there gunning for you. If that were the case, we'd see a lot more violence related to online games.

That said, it really only takes one nutcase, so maybe you're better off being paranoid.

Will this really prevent WHOIS scams?

[greenhide]

People who use this service will definitely see the number of whois-related mail to their mailbox go down, but I'm guessing that most of the people who sign up for this service won't be the kind of people who would fall for the scam anyways.

The real concern is people who are website newcomers, or less sophisticated users who still use NetSol (Veri$ign, whatever) to register their domain names. Those people are unlikely to even realize that it is possible to register their domain names through another registrar.

And, while I have a chance, I'd like to do a plug, if I may. 000domains.com [000domains.com] has had some of the best customer support I've experienced from a registrar--I usually get a response to any of my e-mails immediately. They're not the cheapest, but they are reliable and friendly over the phone, which is great when you're trying to transfer your new client's domain away from Network Solutions! Our company has over 50 domains registered with them.

Telemarketers

[iiioxx]

While it doesn't cut down on my postal direct mail marketing, I have found one way to cut the WHOIS-related telemarketing down to almost nil. I used my cell phone number on the contact info.

At first thought, this might seem like a crazy idea, but it really works. In the US, it is illegal for telemarketers to call your cell phone number to solicit services, or to use a war-dialer on cell phone exchanges to fill their call lists.

On the rare occasions that I have received a telemarketing call, I have simply informed the caller that they were calling a cell phone, that it was illegal, and that if they called again within a one year period I would have legal right to take them to small claims court for a settlement of $500 per offense. I haven't gotten a telemarketing call from the same company twice.

Since I switched my WHOIS record info from my business number to my cell number, I've seen my telemarketing calls drop by well over 99%.

They really only protect you from spammers

[Stephen Samuel]

They can disclose your identifying information if you do just about anything worse than sneeze. They reserve the right to disclose your information or "take any other action DBP deems necessary" if you so much as embarass people!

Be very careful not to piss these people off if you use them.

On the bright side, If you use your domain to spam, they appear to reserve the right to just shut you down completely.

Re:They really only protect you from spammers

[martyn s]

When you take your signature into account, there's actually no reason to use these people :)