Big news: GoDaddy starts redacting Whois information

GoDaddy has redacted personal information in Whois records for all customers.

Effective today, GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) has begun redacting personal information in Whois records for customers worldwide for eligible top level domains.

The move makes Whois records uniform for customers in all locations. Previously, the company only redacted personal information for people who were covered under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDRP).

Whois records now show only the Registrant Organization, state/province, and country.

GoDaddy VP of Domain Registrar Paul Bindel explained to Domain Name Wire that customers who have purchased private Whois registrations will have the option of upgrading or getting a pro-rated refund.

The company will send an email to impacted customers shortly that will be offer an upgrade to GoDaddy’s Full Domain Privacy & Protection. This service includes added protection against expiration due to an invalid credit card, two-factor authorization for domain transfers, and security monitoring.

Customers who don’t opt-out of the upgrade within 30 days will get the Full service for the same price they were paying for Domains by Proxy.

If they opt-out, they’ll get a pro-rated refund of what they paid for the privacy service.

Domain investors and other domain registrants who want their contact details to be made public will be allowed to do so through a function in their account. (This functionality will roll out over the next couple of weeks).

People will still be able to contact domain owners through a form on GoDaddy’s Whois pages.

The change does not apply to top level domains that don’t allow Whois privacy, such as .us.

Increasing privacy regulations made this move inevitable. Most domain name registrars redacted information for all customers when GDPR went into effect.

While this change is likely to cause a revenue hit for GoDaddy, it will also drastically improve customer experience. Spammers and telemarketers harvest Whois data and then inundate domain registrants with sales pitches.

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