With tomorrow being the day to "boycott GoDaddy", many entities will be exposed from behind domain privacy protection if they do transfer out!
A lot of companies use "Domains By Proxy" which is a service owned by GoDaddy for whois privacy protection and that needs to be removed in order to transfer a domain name out of GoDaddy to another registrar. This can and may be an issue for those wishing to remain "private" and not reveal who is behind a specific domain name or ownership of a website.
imgur.com is one company who has publicly announced that they would transfer their domain name away from GoDaddy and the current whois information is showing me that they are in the process of doing so.
imgur.com has been registered with GoDaddy since its creation in 2009 (registrar history: 1) and started using privacy protection on June 23, 2010. The privacy protection was removed about 12/23/2011 and is now displaying the above data with privacy protection removed for the first time in a year and a half.
With services like DomainTools.com who tracks changes in whois history records, a transfer out of a registrar is one that would flag a change they would record. In doing so, a public record is created and without domain privacy protection on, that record will very likely be captured and displayed publicly.
If you have nothing to hide, don’t worry about it. If you do, you may want to reconsider!
Since I like to dig info, things may get pretty interesting if companies do follow the train and boycott! Most companies simply put on privacy protection to prevent email addresses from being exposed but a lot of companies hide behind privacy to domain names they own to protect trade secrets, investments and many more reasons.
If you think removing the privacy protection and "nobody will see it", you may want to think again.
Acro
I’ve never used WHOIS privacy on GoDaddy domains. Are you sure they cannot be transferred out with the feature on, just like with other registrars? E.g. I just moved domains from Name.com to Fabulous and never had to take the feature off.
Jamie Zoch
@Acro
From GoDaddy rep “You can’t transfer a domain that has privacy on it. You’d need to remove the privacy from the domain, and then you should be able to continue with the transfer.” second post: http://support.godaddy.com/groups/go-daddy-customers/forum/topic/domain-transfer-problems-3/ plus I did several other processes of research and the things I found, it needs to be removed at GoDaddy to transfer out. Imgur.com whois confirmed it etc.
Acro
Jamie, if this is the case then it sucks
Steve Jones
Actually, I wonder if that might stifle the boycott a bit. I imagine a lot of people using privacy wouldn’t want to take it off simply to get away from GoDaddy.
Will be interesting to see what happens.
John Humphrey
I wonder if we’d even be dealing with such a restrictive law as SOPA if Whois privacy didn’t exist. Exposing a discreet email address someone uses for Whois VS. losing the ability to easily track down a TM squatter is a no-brainer in my book. Why do we even have private Whois except to provide another addon the registrars can spook a new customer into paying for. If you guys use private whois for ANY of your domains, can you tell me why?
Nice digging Jamie!
David
I am guessing that people have already thought about that issue and may be thinking of changing the email/contact details.. but that again will lock the domain for another 60 days with GoDaddy!
Jamie Zoch
@Acro,
It is the case. Here is another example of a customers recent experience having to remove privacy to transfer out: http://ajy.co/2011/escaping-godaddy-and-domains-by-proxy/
Jamie Zoch
@Steve,
I would think it would. A lot of people likely would have issues even removing the privacy as it’s attached to a different account technically. DomainsByProxy.com is the location you need to remove the privacy and it requires a separate login than your GoDaddy account.
Joe
John, do you want to put your home address on a name like PoliceSuck.com? even if you are a officer who registered it so no one else would use it I don’t think you want people to know where you live.
Aaron James Young
Jamie, thanks for the link to my site. Just to throw in my 2 cents – the technical issues around removing privacy did nearly stop me, especially since I had registered the domain name with an old email address. I was at a loss to find my Domains By Proxy login ID until I found that I could see it by starting the process of adding privacy to another domain at GoDaddy (which kind of defeats the purpose of a separate login ID).
Jamie Zoch
@Aaron,
Thanks for stopping by and no problem for the link. What you provided will be helpful for some that can’t find the user data needed, plus it proves you need to remove privacy in order to transfer.
IrishDomainer
wow what a mess! I’ve been away, why is everyone moving domains from GoDaddy all of a sudden?