Your Auction Is Now Private: GoDaddy fixes an everlasting problem…

About a month ago I complained about the GoDaddy auction system that allows previous owners to renew their expired domains up to a week after the auction has finished at TDNAM. This means that a domain won at auction and paid afterwards can be renewed by it’s original owner and the auction will be canceled. You then have to wait for a refund from GoDaddy.

It’s possible for a domain owner to simply remember to renew his/hers domain at the last minute but many times it was someone that didn’t like the auction result that would contact the owner and offered money (a lot less than the auction result) to renew the domain and sell the domain to them. Whois contact details were visible the entire period, before/during/after an auction, so anyone could contact the owner after the auction. One email from a domainer could have gave them the heads up and they renewed the domains they had otherwise neglected to renew. Owner would make some money instead of nothing and domainer(?) would pay less than the winning bid.

Now GoDaddy has announced that is making all whois info private on expired domains. They now hide the contact information for expiring domain names in the Whois database. GoDaddy system updates the registrant, administrative, and technical contact information so potential buyers can’t contact the domain registrant during expiration.

Some registrars change the whois details after a domain is expired to avoid this. e.g. Network Solutions changes whois to Pending Renewal or Deletion. Of course anyone could find the owner’s whois details using Domain Tools but GoDaddy just makes it easier for anyone to do this. Here’s how private contact information displays in the Whois database:

Of course that doesn’t fixes the overlying problem, won and paid domains can still be renewed, but at least this solution will bring GoDaddy up to par with other registrars. e.g. Network Solutions changes whois to Pending Renewal or Deletion. Of course anyone can find the owner’s whois details using Domain Tools but putting domains behind privacy makes it just a bit harder.

GoDaddy will not change the way it handles domains that were behind privacy before they expired. The private contact information for Domains By Proxy® already displays for a domain name during expiration.

If the owner wants to transfer a domain name away from Go Daddy during the auto-renew grace period, the original registrant information will be automatically reverted from the private contact information to the original registrant information when owner requests the authorization code. This way owner will be able to approve the transfer.