Privacy Off .CA Domains (2.Viewing)

Esdiel said:

I'm surprised to hear this. I don't use any special spam filters but I still get emails about renewing domains I dropped almost 10 years ago (and forgot I ever owned). It's usually scam emails about renewing old .COM domains I had at GD before GD started offering free whois privacy, or from web developers trying to sell their services for my domains. I always attributed those to my whois info being public, given there's a clear link. I don't get too many, or not as many as before, but I would have assumed someone like you must get a ton.

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Also interesting, I mean yes, I do get the odd spam, but i'd say I get almost an equal amount of snail mail spam. I get it, but its pretty minimal and I can't typically attribute it to whois. Lately the ones I see in my junk folder are bitcoin related, various phishing attempts, nigerian type scams, etc... I do get the occasional one from the same schmuck over and over about "the domain something.net is for sale" and its because I own the .ca. Maybe one every week or two. But its not like having thousands of domains means you get thousands of spam messages a day.

I have logged into my cira account, it is pretty basic, I can edit my address and that is about it.

It lists all of my .ca domains but there is no setting to change privacy on an account level.

In fact there is no setting to change privacy on a domain level either which indicates it all has to be done at the registrar level.

rlm said:

And the whole concept of spam concerns are bogus. I have thousands of domains and don't have a spam problem.

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I agree here. Maybe it's because I keep my CA's at Canadian registrars, mostly Namepros, but I've never gotten spam on them. Now .COMs, where I mostly have them at GoDaddy and Namecheap...it's spam city!

I understand privacy for other reasons though (personal info, others seeing your patterns) but I may be naïve but I don't think .CA's are targeted that much for spam like other extensions

This link explains it completely

https://www.cira.ca/blog/ca-domains/domain-registration-tips-cira-whois-privacy


So the default is privacy for all personal registrations


Business Registrants have privacy turned off and that can be changed here in godaddy:






Once you click the edit button you see this:









I changed a domain to Corporation but it is still private on the cira whois site. I assume it does not update immediately so I will post back here if I notice it change.

MapleDots said:

I changed a domain to Corporation but it is still private on the cira whois site. I assume it does not update immediately so I will post back here if I notice it change.

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Good thinking, and please do let us know if it works.

Did it ask you for proof of your corporation, or the name of it at least, when you made the change? I guess we have to first wait and see if it worked but I'm wondering whether any of us could do this even without a corporation.

Esdiel said:

Did it ask you for proof of your corporation

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Nope, I was able to make the change with the drop down so now it might take a day or so until they update.

Just be advised that I personally know of at least one case where a guy used a long-expired corporation name. Some asshole who wanted to steal the domain from him then registered the company name federally, and tried to claim the domain was his. The a-hole then contacted CIRA and told them the existing domain owner wasn't legit and then CIRA did a Registrant Identity Verification, asking the guy to prove he was "abc corp" or whatever. He figured, no problem, I'll just go register/revive that corporation now, only to find out that a-hole registered it already and thus blocked him from registering it. Since he couldn't prove ownership, CIRA then confiscated the domain, dropped it and he was never able to get it back. The a-hole didn't get it either, but this poor guy lost a very valuable domain name.

I'm guessing you don't have a 6-figure domain name, but none-the-less, be aware of what can happen when it comes to not having verifiable ownership information.

Update: After making the change to a corporation my domain is still private, it seems to have made no difference so I think it depends on how you registered the domain.

I have a few where the domain is not private but those were purchased from corporations so I think the settings may have carried forward.

It looks like only a call to godaddy support will answer the OP's question because at this point I have done everything possible within the cira settings and the godaddy settings.

rlm said:

He figured, no problem, I'll just go register/revive that corporation now, only to find out that a-hole registered it already and thus blocked him from registering it.  Since he couldn't prove ownership, CIRA then confiscated the domain, dropped it and he was never able to get it back. 

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Interesting, thanks for sharing. Do you remember how long ago that was?

I'm a little surprised CIRA would confiscate the domain if this guy was also a Canadian citizen, since there would still be a Canadian presence despite choosing/using the wrong status.

It would definitely make sense a ~couple decades ago when CIRA had much more strict requirements about who was eligible to register a domain, with even further rules about what domains those eligible people/companies were allowed to register.

I just checked my domains and some are even set to aboriginal, they are all over the place. It appears this setting stays to whatever it was set as when you transfer the domain in.

So if the previous owner was set as aboriginal people for the previous owner then it stays as that when transferred to your godaddy account.

Crap, now I have a two day project to check them all.

Esdiel said:

Interesting, thanks for sharing. Do you remember how long ago that was?

I'm a little surprised CIRA would confiscate the domain if this guy was also a Canadian citizen, since there would still be a Canadian presence despite choosing/using the wrong status.

It would definitely make sense a ~couple decades ago when CIRA had much more strict requirements about who was eligible to register a domain, with even further rules about what domains those eligible people/companies were allowed to register.

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This was 2007. CIRA knew the a-hole guy was malicious and kinda wanted to help out the registrant, so they gave him time to try and revive his corporate name, which he couldn't do. So CIRA thought they'd be smart, drop the domain at an odd time, then call the registrant and have him simply re-register it with an accurate registrant name, thus solving the problem. However, CIRA didn't expect anyone else to notice it was available to register momentarily - and so a third party reg'd it and beat them all to the punch. CIRA said "sorry, we tried, its out of our hands now". So in this case, CIRA was trying to do the right thing. They just blew it.

rlm said:

so a third party reg'd it and beat them all to the punch.

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And pray tell.... who was the third party?

Does he like to ski by any chance? *ROFL*

MapleDots said:

And pray tell.... who was the third party?

Does he like to ski by any chance? *ROFL*

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No, it wasn't me.