The way WHOIS information is presented these days, differs from a year ago.
Queries now display information that places emphasis and priority on the Registrar of the domain, including their contact email address for abuse.
While this change appears to be subtle, it can have an impact on your privacy and business.
When someone uses a WHOIS tool, such as DomainTools, to view who owns a particular domain name, the domain owner’s information only appears past these results:
Registrar URL: http://www.fabulous.com
Updated Date: 2013-06-07T23:10:45Z
Creation Date: 1997-03-11T05:00:00Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2016-03-12T00:00:00Z
Registrar: FABULOUS.COM PTY LTD.
Registrar IANA ID: 411
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse@fabulous.com
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +61.730070015
Reseller: N/A
Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited
Registry Registrant ID: N/A
Keeping in mind that most people out there aren’t familiar with the difference between registrar and registrant, there is a strong chance that emails meant for you end up in the mailboxes of your registrar.
At the very least, someone includes your registrar in private communications meant for you.
For the second time this week, I received an email that CC’ed my registrar’s abuse department, not as part of a complaint of sorts, but as an inquiry about a domain name.
This concerns me, because it clearly includes other parties in a private communication, and also because important information meant for me might never reach my mailbox.
Apparently, these changes were mandated by ICANN, that also spearheaded the email verification process from 2014 onwards; a requirement that caused a lot of trouble with phishing emails sent to unsuspected GoDaddy users.
I haven’t received any email CC’ed to registrar and me so far but this is really a concern. Registrars can put their contact detail at the bottom instead of top if that doesn’t violate ICANN policy.
AbdulBasit – The raw WHOIS data output has changed to include these additions. Tools such as DomainTools, Who.is, v3whois.com etc. can all re-structure the output as seen fit, but they provide the raw data by default. Registrar info used to not include the email or phone number; I wonder how many calls they get because of this.
Oh I see… So those sites you mentioned must change the layout of WHOIS because that’s confusing for the people who are not much aware of looking WHOIS and getting the exact email of the domain owner. They might just see the first email ID and send it. This way we will be losing out many genuine inquiries…
Btw, my comment was in queue for moderation but there is no option to follow your specific post or receive an email if you make any reply/comment. I needed to come and visit this page to see if my comment was approved and if there is any response made by someone… You may implement this by having Jetpack.
Better option would be to activate privacy services. Then mails would be fwd to you.
Dom – That would make no difference, as the Registrar’s email and phone would still sit higher than the scrambled email. That would be a worse option, actually.
I went and checked that it’s true. I guess now we have to be more creative and direct on the landing page.
Every registry should be force to follow the Eurid’s way to manage whois.
Period.