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Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Network Solutions: The Last Bastion of Consumer Privacy
The former monopolist domain registrar has blocked Google's new "whois" search feature where users could type in a shortcut in Google's search bar and find domain owner information.
Why? Because they want to protect us domain name owners from spammers, see?
"According to NSI's Mitchell, Whois look-ups pose a substantial threat to customers, whose e-mail addresses and phone numbers can easily fall into the wrong hands. In order to thwart abuse, the company has long set a daily cap on the number of times any third-party Web site can query its database. NSI will not specify that number, but Mitchell said that the company places the cap to deter spammers. "
So, it only took them seven years to realize their open database was a personal privacy debacle that needed to be fixed! Anyone who ever bought a domain name from Network Solutions sooner or later became painfully aware that any spammer could download essentially all phone numbers, addresses and other contact info.
So remember folks, buy your domain names at Dotster, GoDaddy or directNIC. But never, ever buy domain names from Network Solutions or Register.com. They still charge $35 for domain names, the same domain names that sell for as little as $7.95 from the little guys.
Posted by
Cory Kleinschmidt
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