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Ask HN: Every time I register a new domain, I get spammed

4 points by welshguy ↗ HN
Every time I register a new domain, I get spammed by companies wanting to develop my new website. The messages don't come from my domain name provider - they come from third party companies. How do they come by this data? Or am I being naive in supposing that my domain name provider is not selling this information on?

Edit: I can see that it probably comes from WHOIS data. But how do they get tipped off that the new domain exists in the first place?

15 comments

[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 52.4 ms ] thread
alanpost
The same thing started happening to me, just this year actually. A domain I registered in 2014 didn't suffer this problem.

My observation is that it is coming from the whois record for the domain.

coreyp_1
I was wondering exactly the same thing! I registered a new domain and was flooded with emails and phone calls!
trebor
Unless you pay for "WHOIS Privacy" your contact information is public. I'm not certain how they find the new domain registrations though, maybe they watch for new DNS entries.
pravka
Use Google Domains -- their WHOIS privacy is free.
trebor
It's free if you don't mind giving Google your contact information, which they can easily combine with their advertising data...
[deleted]
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theaccordance
There's a public WHOIS record that's associated to every domain registered that spammers mine for both your email address as well as your physical mailing address.

Best way to stop this kind of spam is to simply pay for privacy protection on your domains. Privacy Protection is an annual, per domain service that shouldn't add more than a couple dollars to your yearly renewal costs.

auganov
I'm aware of one TLD operator that actually does report all new domain creations. Probably more do that too.

Other than that there's plenty of companies that live of scraping WHOIS [and related] data. domaintools.com most notably. EDIT: they surely do more than just scrape whois data

An unsophisticated spammer could just scrap dailychanges.com or similar sites and get pretty far.

ohashi
Easier way, get zone files, compare and you've got a list of all new registrations. Then scrape WHOIS data.
bramgg
I'm sure this is what they do.

Whenever registering a domain with a TLD that provides zone files with my real WHOIS info filled out I get an email asking me to pay to "get my website on Google".