Your first landing page should be whois (1 Viewing)

When I turn off WHOIS privacy at WHC it displays Name, Telephone & Email address.

However, it does not display company name and address.

Is there any way to have whois display the registered company name?

@FM @richard.schreier

The funny thing is it displays completely on regular whois systems, just not at cira

I will be changing all my whois to public but I have to figure out if I can do it in bulk at whc.


Will also be changing my email address on whois to sales@mapledots.ca in case it does not display my company name in whois.

CIRA WHOIS is tricky. Using trial and error, it's finally working right:

WHOIS Domain Name Lookup | CIRA

Registrant information​

But, in Tucows/OpenSRS, I had to do the following:

First Name: Leap of Faith
Last Name: Financial Services Inc.
Organization Name: Leap of Faith Financial Services Inc.

Legal Type: Corporation (Canada or Canadian province or territory)

In cira whois it does not show ORGANIZATION and on whois.com and others it does.

I think your company name only shows because you put your personal name as the company name.

FYI All... CIRA privacy policy has required that all "individual" type registrant data (Canadian Citizen, Resident) be redacted when displayed in whois. All "non-individual" type registrant data (Corporation) is fully displayed in whois unless the "non-individual" registrant specifically applies to CIRA to have the whois information also redacted.

richard.schreier said:

FYI All... CIRA privacy policy has required that all "individual" type registrant data (Canadian Citizen, Resident) be redacted when displayed in whois. All "non-individual" type registrant data (Corporation) is fully displayed in whois unless the "non-individual" registrant specifically applies to CIRA to have the whois information also redacted.

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Mine are all registered under Canadian Citizen and have MapleDots specified as Organization.

When I turn off whois privacy and view on WHOIS.com ALL information is visible and nothing is hidden for .ca's so I don't think what you stated above is being adhered to by other whois providers.

I'm trying to figure out how I can display MapleDots as the organization name across the board.

I disagree with this strategy and how would linking to generic WHOIS be better than what RLM does, and send it to a branded site lander with an inquiry form?

It just makes things even harder for newbs and feebs to navigate. No way I'm using WHOIS as my primary contact form, no way no how.

Plus, he doesn't even take his own advice and I just tested a pile of his domains and they all go to PPC Ad Pages with a link back to DomainKing.com.

Rick's an important guy in the history of the domain market and deserves respect, but take his "advice on modern domaining" with a huge grain of salt - I follow him on Twitter and if I took ALL of his advice I'd be living in a cave while holding back my domains for the Stud.com launch.

DomainRecap said:

I disagree with this strategy and how would linking to generic WHOIS be better than what RLM does, and send it to a branded site lander with an inquiry form?

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Agreed but I think Rick Schwartz is talking about having WHOIS show full contact info. He also forwards to his lander but he has continuously preached having whois info visible.

MapleDots said:

Agreed but I think Rick Schwartz is talking about having WHOIS show full contact info. He also forwards to his lander but he has continuously preached having whois info visible.

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Exact quote:

"Your first landing page should be WHOIS."

I realize that writing is not his forte, but that's a pretty clear sentence, regardless of how he might have "meant it". This goes back to my original point, read Rick for entertainment, news, and the odd outburst, not to gain serious insight into the current domain market, as half the time even he doesn't know what he's writing.

What Rick is saying is that as a domain seller, whois should be considered the first landing page a buyer will view and that you need to have an accurate whois listing so people can contact you. Otherwise they may attempt to go through a broker and now you've got an unnecessary 3rd party involved in the transaction.

And for the record, I actually prefer to not be under privacy, the only reason I started to was to temporarily cover my tracks on my TBR buying habits as this forum has shown me how people will track what I do.

I eventually remove privacy, because I actually prefer it to be fully transparent. These are my reasons for public whois:

1) It confirms that there is nothing fishy going on with domain ownership.
2) The buyer can have confidence in negotiating directly with the owner.
3) eliminate need for brokers
4) The buyer will more readily pay you directly. No escrow services which add fees and delays.
5) Not giving access to whois gives a potential complainant the excuse to go straight to CDRP before talking with you. That is never a good thing.

rlm said:

What Rick is saying is that as a domain seller, whois should be considered the first landing page a buyer will view and that you need to have an accurate whois listing so people can contact you.

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Actually no, that is clearly not what he's saying with that sentence, it's what you're intoning from his subsequent comments and knowing him to be a person with a tenuous grasp of the English language.

And yes, I obviously know what he's trying vainly to say, but that's not what I'm talking about. Maybe I'm making my point too bluntly here, but I read Rick on Twitter daily... and let's just leave it at that.

What really bugs me about this type of conversation is that everyone seems to be looking for the "magic secret" to selling domains, constantly asking "which lander is best?", "what marketplace should I list on?", "should I use BIN, Make Offer or Request Price?" etc., etc. and it's all BS - there is no secret, just buy what you think are good names and if someone really wants to buy, they will beat a path to your door. If not, then all the wasted time & effort in the world won't sell crap.

Plus, there are huge risks for posting personal WHOIS data for the world to see, especially if you don't have a ironclad business to hide behind. The first second you go public, you will be attacked by 3rd World scammers, who will call your phone incessantly, fill your email box up to the brim, and use any address, name or phone info to try and social engineer virtually all bank, crypto and payment services. hoping to hit one you use.

Naturally these scammers will also try to use any personal info to steal your domains (it's easy to run a WHOIS report), so be very careful with what personal data you share with everyone, as these 3rd Worlders are voracious and will hit all the popular service providers 24/7 hoping to hit a bullseye.

And they just need to find one dumb company rep to win.

And let's not get into the UDRP/CDRP ramifications, as I've read lots of rulings where the Complainant gained favor by displaying WHOIS reports based on the Respondent's publicly-available WHOIS personal info showing that "this domain squatter owns thousands of domains, therefore we win!". And a lot of panelists use this spurious data as "clear evidence" of squatting.

I find being relatively anonymous on WHOIS a far better tactic.

Clarification

I'm just glad that people still read Rick's stuff and follow it, as there is already too much competition out there.

For example, I remember when I sold off my BTC - guess who bought in heavy not much later and (after being a contrarian on digital currencies) hyped BTC up as a part of his portfolio - then guess what happened not long after that?

DomainRecap said:

Actually no, that is clearly not what he's saying with that sentence, it's what you're intoning from his subsequent comments and knowing him to be a person with a tenuous grasp of the English language.

And yes, I obviously know what he's trying vainly to say, but that's not what I'm talking about. Maybe I'm making my point too bluntly here, but I read Rick on Twitter daily... and let's just leave it at that.

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Well there's the problem, you care too much what Rick or anyone else has to say. Rick often has valid points specific to his type of portfolio. But there are different ways to make money from domains and everyone has to decide for themselves what works for them, their lifestyle, their abilities, the amount of effort they want to put in, their level of paranoia, their TLDs, even the specific types/categories of domains should influence what you do with them.

DomainRecap said:

What really bugs me about this type of conversation is that everyone seems to be looking for the "magic secret" to selling domains, constantly asking "which lander is best?", "what marketplace should I list on?", "should I use BIN, Make Offer or Request Price?" etc., etc. and it's all BS - there is no secret, just buy what you think are good names and if someone really wants to buy, they will beat a path to your door. If not, then all the wasted time & effort in the world won't sell crap.

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Of course not, there is no one magic secret, I know you know that so don't let it bug you what Rick or anyone else is preaching. Rick preaches what works for him, and that's it, he only has his perspective. I wouldn't want there to be one magic secret anyways because then it'd be too easy for anyone else.

DomainRecap said:

Plus, there are huge risks for posting personal WHOIS data for the world to see, especially if you don't have a ironclad business to hide behind. The first second you go public, you will be attacked by 3rd World scammers, who will call your phone incessantly, fill your email box up to the brim, and use any address, name or phone info to try and social engineer virtually all bank, crypto and payment services. hoping to hit one you use.

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When was the last time you heard of a .ca that actually got hijacked? Call me foolish for public whois, but I'm not concerned. With thousands of domains in public whois I have no more problems with spam on that email account than on any other email account. I've always just presumed that people use the spam argument as a cover for their real motivations, to hide from CRA, an ex-wife, a business partner they screwed over, dog the bounty hunter or whatever boogeyman is out to get them.

As for the phone # in whois, I use a $35/yr magic jack number. My home # gets a spam call every day, if not multiple. My magic jack number never gets a spam call, despite being published in whois. It does get the occasional buyer to call though. I never answer it, it goes to voicemail and I get the voicemail as an email attachment - which is nice.

So the spam argument is entirely baloney in my experience. So what really bugs me is when people use that as their privacy argument. They should just say the real answer is "I'm hiding from <insert here> and that's why I don't like public whois".

The only valid whois privacy argument for me personally is the one about hiding my domain investment & acquisition strategies. So it has become a small compromise for me to start with privacy for TBR purchases, then switch over to my primary company profile when I consolidate the domains to my main registrar.

I believe Richard has perviously said there were none that he knew of, but just for the record, @richard.schreier - how often has CIRA been aware of or was asked to intervene in a .CA hijacking case? Does CIRA have any policy regarding what CIRA would do in the event of a hijacking case? What course of action would CIRA recommend to the disputed owners?

DomainRecap said:

Naturally these scammers will also try to use any personal info to steal your domains (it's easy to run a WHOIS report), so be very careful with what personal data you share with everyone, as these 3rd Worlders are voracious and will hit all the popular service providers 24/7 hoping to hit a bullseye.

And they just need to find one dumb company rep to win.

And let's not get into the UDRP/CDRP ramifications, as I've read lots of rulings where the Complainant gained favor by displaying WHOIS reports based on the Respondent's publicly-available WHOIS personal info showing that "this domain squatter owns thousands of domains, therefore we win!". And a lot of panelists use this spurious data as "clear evidence" of squatting.

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I've found panelists to be fairly logical, and when you don't respond, that's when I've seen some stretch by panelists being made. So if you don't defend yourself, that's your own fault. But if you respond semi-intelligently, panelists are pretty good at seeing through the hyperbole used by complainants. And your pattern of registrations can help you too, you set the pattern and you can use it to defend yourself. I don't see you infringing with blatant TM domains so you really shouldn't be so worried about it. Any decent one-word domains are pretty much guaranteed to have multiple trademarks existing, but without actual infringement, it is meaningless. And I promise you, having public whois means they need to contact you first, and it is ALWAYS better to have that discussion with them prior to CDRP. I promise you, that alone is worth any other perceived hassle of public whois. If they think you're some rando with a domain, they may think they can get away with a quick an easy CDRP. But if they realize you know what your doing, they are going to be much less willing to just wing it.

Little side story: I once had a 1-word dictionary .ca which was also a major shoe brand. They caught me with PPC ads on it, which was mostly inadvertent and stupid on my part. But I owned the mistake, said they were right, and I simply gave them the domain. There's no better lesson than learning the hard way... And I'd rather own my mistake privately than to have it enshrined in CDRP. As mentioned, it is probably the best reason of all to have public whois.

rlm said:

When was the last time you heard of a .ca that actually got hijacked? Call me foolish for public whois, but I'm not concerned. With thousands of domains in public whois I have no more problems with spam on that email account than on any other email account. I've always just presumed that people use the spam argument as a cover for their real motivations, to hide from CRA, an ex-wife, a business partner they screwed over, dog the bounty hunter or whatever boogeyman is out to get them.

As for the phone # in whois, I use a $35/yr magic jack number. My home # gets a spam call every day, if not multiple. My magic jack number never gets a spam call, despite being published in whois. It does get the occasional buyer to call though. I never answer it, it goes to voicemail and I get the voicemail as an email attachment - which is nice.

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I agree with that, I like to keep everything above board and there is one thing a lot of domainers forget about whois...

It lets the potential client know you are the actual owner if he can see it in whois and that builds instant credibility.

I think all the secrecy some domainers aim for is probably detrimental to their sales. I know I always want to know who I'm dealing with and even when I purchased from other domainers in the past the secrecy always made me wonder why they did that. My info is on my website, I like whois public and will be changing it all over to public once I figure out how to display ORGANIZATION on the CIRA whois.

As far as spam goes... I use Google Domains and Work Space, very seldom do I ever see any spam.

rlm said:

So the spam argument is entirely baloney in my experience. So what really bugs me is when people use that as their privacy argument. They should just say the real answer is "I'm hiding from <insert here> and that's why I don't like public whois".

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Don't be an ass. Just recently Tony Twitter posted that he bought some .US domains and was absolutely swamped with email and phone SPAM, so it does happen and public WHOIS is like a 3rd world swamp house.

I bought one .US years ago and in addition to the mountain of email SPAM, it resulted in my Bell service being hijacked by some Moroccans when a brain-dead Bell employee gave my account away like candy. I got it back quick and there was no real damage done, but that experience put me off public WHOIS for life.

All they need is an email or phone and they go to town. And yeah, I could buy Magic Jacks and Apple Jacks all day and use an ETH email, but a lot of people don't or can't go to those lengths.

If you have miraculously been spared any of this 3rd World scam/spam/social engineering harassment, then congrats (or maybe these scammers don't think .CA buyers are worth harassing), but it's definitely not what usually happens when buying new domains without some form of WHOIS privacy.

MapleDots said:

II like whois public and will be changing it all over to public once I figure out how to display ORGANIZATION on the CIRA whois.

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If public WHOIS is so incredibly safe, why worry? Just post your home phone, your primary email and your home address.

Oh yeah, and then go buy a few .US domains and I think you'll change your mind real fast.

DomainRecap said:

If public WHOIS is so incredibly safe, why worry? Just post your home phone, your primary email and your home address.

Oh yeah, and then go buy a few .US domains and I think you'll change your mind real fast.

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My address is common knowledge, I work from home, it is recorded everywhere on everyone of my websites. Also 411 lists most addresses and if not for that there are many websites I can look someone up.

I don't know why my home address would be a secret, if I play everything by the book I have no reason to worry. Been working from home for 10 years now, online stores everything shows home address, no issues ever because I run a clean ship.

Whenever I look at a company website and I see no address I get leery, trust is important in business.