Namesilo - privacy is not private - warning !!!

edgey · Jun 5, 2015

Mr Jack said:
I don't see this linked to privacy in any way. But yes, random addresses for domains would be better.

The problem is not that it is linked to privacy. The problem is that it links all domains to the same owner - meaning that if you have a private blog network, it is now exposed wide open.

In my case, it did have the side-effect of linking all my sites to my name - I bought a domain at auction, and the registrar was slow with the transfer, which meant my whois details were public for a few days. I then transferred that domain to NameSilo - with "privacy".

And because NameSilo's "privacy" has linked all my domain names to the same owner, whoisology has linked all my domains to my name. It couldn't get much better.

givensia · Jun 5, 2015

Thanks for this thread guys. I am staying away from namesilo and will urge my friends to stay away too. I hate companies that do stupid things like this.

spappa · Jun 5, 2015

A massive, massive thank you to the op. I wasn't aware of this and namesilo absolutely does not make this clear when registering a domain with them.

Privacy isn't just a matter of hiding domain names, it's hiding that accounts are linked. That is so obvious it's not funny and yet name silo link your accounts! It should be automatic that accounts aren't linked.

They are an absolute disgrace and I'll never use their services again.

edgey · Jun 5, 2015

fatboy said:
With the 'randomize email' option, would it be possible for two different people to have the same random protected whois email address over the course of the year, not both at the same time but say January it belongs to person 1 and then March it is used by person 2?

If the answer is yes then even better - if its known that different people can have the same email address, it blows the archiving sites out the water.

Interesting idea ... except that if my church/childcare site happened to be assigned the same random email address as your hardcore porn site ... explaining it to others might not be so easy ...

edgey · Jun 5, 2015

spappa said:
It should be automatic that accounts aren't linked.

It would be much more sensible for NameSilo to make the DEFAULT option as such - I can't see that this would present a problem for any of their customers.

fc-dh · Jun 5, 2015

50 PBN domains in one account probably all under the same Whois (how about that footprint lol) and then blame the register for their fuck up in the first place, classic

You should be having 50 different whois in the first place, did nobody explain to you that Google can see behind the Whios protection? So having 50 sites in one account isn't a smart move in the first place, now is it?

edgey · Jun 5, 2015

Thanks for the lecture - but as I mentioned previously, this is not by any means my entire network - 50 domains is not a huge number (to me, anyway). These domains were not an entire network on their own, either.
Having hundreds (or thousands) of different accounts for each domain name is hardly practical and (as I've already explained) I'm not interested in using fake registrant details.

The other problem that I have not addressed here is not just the issue of G seeing your pbn.

There many be many reasons why you don't want the general public to know that you are the owner of different domain names - so NameSilo's "privacy" policy is also flawed in this respect.

edgey · Jun 5, 2015

It only gets worse ... More bad news for anyone caught by the NameSilo "privacy" debacle ...

I transferred a name from NameSilo to NameCheap two days ago, and checked the whoisology records today - whoisology still displays the previous NameSilo registration details.

It appears that whoisology.com only publishes its updates every April, August and December - so you won't know the extent of any possible damage until some time in August.

If you think you have escaped and your NameSilo domains are currently "clean" in whoisology, you might want to wait until August before you use those domains as part of a pbn.

waitier · Jun 5, 2015

But then again, who the F is whoislogy? If you changed your whois info, i'm pretty sure google knows the change immediately. They can keep the record all they want, but it seems you're over exagerating the archive of just 1 whois scrapper.

You can blame NS all you want, but I think you should also start a flame war against whoislogy, unless of course you endorse it because it just seems like it. I'd suggest you not mention that scrapper in almost every post.

edgey · Jun 5, 2015

waitier said:
But then again, who the F is whoislogy? If you changed your whois info, i'm pretty sure google knows the change immediately. They can keep the record all they want, but it seems you're over exagerating the archive of just 1 whois scrapper.

You can blame NS all you want, but I think you should also start a flame war against whoislogy, unless of course you endorse it because it just seems like it. I'd suggest you not mention that scrapper in almost every post.

I'm mentioning (def not endorsing) whoisology because this site seems to have far more archiving of records than most other whois sites - on most whois sites, you can only see the most recent record.

As I mentioned previously, my concern is not just G seeing it - there may be reasons you do not want all the domains in your account to be public knowledge. Most of my friends and clients are spewing because of this aspect - nothing to do with G and pbn from their side.

This is not about changing your whois details, how many domains you have in one account, what G can or cannot see, or even about whois sites and their archives - the problem would not exist if NameSilo was more in touch with the needs of their customers.

Commoner · Jun 5, 2015

This is preposterous! What a mind-blowing drama without an apology? If NS still lives in denial, kindly note that more folks will be aware of this post, not to mention spreading the neg. rep all over - do remedy swiftly

bughumm · Jun 5, 2015

Thank you for notice. I will check setting for all domain at namesilo

fc-dh · Jun 5, 2015

edgey said:
Thanks for the lecture - but as I mentioned previously, this is not by any means my entire network - 50 domains is not a huge number (to me, anyway)..

You don't think that 50 PBN domains under the same whois isn't big, oke than, sorry nothing sad.

edgey · Jun 5, 2015

It's less than 10 %, and those domains are not in the same network - they are spread over more than 20 networks - and many of those sites are for other purposes than pbns - so no, it's not a big deal for me. I use the same system with other registrars, never had any problems, never had a single site deindexed.

Again, this is not about the number of domains in an account.

As I mentioned previously, many of my friends and clients do not have pbns, they don't care what G can or cannot see, but they don't want the general public to know that their sites have the same owner. NameSilo's default "privacy" settings have made this public.

namesilo1 · Jun 5, 2015

We wanted to let you all know that we have just updated our system to use a unique email address for all private domains in our system. We are always interested in feedback and ways we can improve our service, and, based upon this forum, we made the decision to implement the change. We apologize to anybody who was negatively impacted by our previous system - it certainly was not our intent. We had an option in place that I pointed out in several posts above that would have entirely prevented the issues a few people have reported here, but we also understand that some people had an assumption of the way our privacy system worked and were not aware that they had choices for how to configure it. Also, as I noted earlier in a few posts, our system automatically rotated the email address every 1-3 days to help combat harvesters like whoisology. This should mean that a very small percentage of domains could have actually been linked together. We also updated our whois server to apply a different rate limiting methodology to limit the number of domains that harvesters like whoisology (who seem to be in clear violation of ICANN, registry and registrar rules for performing high-volume WHOIS lookups) can obtain in the first place. We understand any linking for the purposes of people like the OP of this thread is too much, and, again, we apologize. In any case, to help avoid this possibility in the future, and also because we would like to bring our service more inline with the practices of other registrars to limit confusion, we have implemented the change to make all email addresses unique. I also want to emphasize once more that at NO TIME was personal information EVER revealed for any of our customers using our privacy service. It will take a few days for all domains in our system to be updated, but we are happy to expedite the process for people who make that request via email to our support address.

deancow · Jun 5, 2015

edgey said:
It only gets worse ... More bad news for anyone caught by the NameSilo "privacy" debacle ...

I transferred a name from NameSilo to NameCheap two days ago, and checked the whoisology records today - whoisology still displays the previous NameSilo registration details.

It appears that whoisology.com only publishes its updates every April, August and December - so you won't know the extent of any possible damage until some time in August.

If you think you have escaped and your NameSilo domains are currently "clean" in whoisology, you might want to wait until August before you use those domains as part of a pbn.

It's irrelevant when they update, it's not like google uses whoisology to detect pbns, they have archives of their own to analyse.
Just because whoisology does update later this year and doesn't link all your sites together it doesn't mean your in any way 'of the hook'. If whoisology can see it google can and they are 2 separate systems.

If anything we should thank whoisology for making this problem public

deancow · Jun 5, 2015

namesilo1 said:
We wanted to let you all know that we have just updated our system to use a unique email address for all private domains in our system. We are always interested in feedback and ways we can improve our service, and, based upon this forum, we made the decision to implement the change. We apologize to anybody who was negatively impacted by our previous system - it certainly was not our intent. We had an option in place that I pointed out in several posts above that would have entirely prevented the issues a few people have reported here, but we also understand that some people had an assumption of the way our privacy system worked and were not aware that they had choices for how to configure it. Also, as I noted earlier in a few posts, our system automatically rotated the email address every 1-3 days to help combat harvesters like whoisology. This should mean that a very small percentage of domains could have actually been linked together. We also updated our whois server to apply a different rate limiting methodology to limit the number of domains that harvesters like whoisology (who seem to be in clear violation of ICANN, registry and registrar rules for performing high-volume WHOIS lookups) can obtain in the first place. We understand any linking for the purposes of people like the OP of this thread is too much, and, again, we apologize. In any case, to help avoid this possibility in the future, and also because we would like to bring our service more inline with the practices of other registrars to limit confusion, we have implemented the change to make all email addresses unique. I also want to emphasize once more that at NO TIME was personal information EVER revealed for any of our customers using our privacy service. It will take a few days for all domains in our system to be updated, but we are happy to expedite the process for people who make that request via email to our support address.

I don't think you guys are in anyway to blame, you offered a privacy service which was delivered. If you offered a privacy service especially for PBNs then there would be a problem.

The only problem is your lack of paragraphs.

namesilo1 · Jun 5, 2015

Thanks. Appreciate the sentiment and will try to remember there are such things as line breaks

waitier · Jun 6, 2015

namesilo1 said:
I also want to emphasize once more that at NO TIME was personal information EVER revealed for any of our customers using our privacy service. It will take a few days for all domains in our system to be updated, but we are happy to expedite the process for people who make that request via email to our support address.

@namesilo1 Really? So what if your system fails to switch whois privacy ON when it is by default set to ON? Basically a bug in your system made my personal details public because it switched privacy to OFF. That particular domain wasn't the first I've had in that account, and all accounts prior had privacy set to ON by default.

So tell me, how is it possible and in any right mind that I will set it to OFF, furthermore I have tripple confirmed every single domain before purchasing?

I said you should appoligize, but sometimes, an apology is just not enough. Then again, not like I have any rights to ask for a refund, which in this case, is super frustrating. It's like killing someone and then apologizing, you know that's not going to be enough for the rest of your life, even in eternity.

edgey · Jun 6, 2015

deancow said:
It's irrelevant when they update, it's not like google uses whoisology to detect pbns, they have archives of their own to analyse.
Just because whoisology does update later this year and doesn't link all your sites together it doesn't mean your in any way 'of the hook'. If whoisology can see it google can and they are 2 separate systems.

If anything we should thank whoisology for making this problem public

Again, you're missing the point.

Both myself and many of my clients have multiple domain names that we do not want linked to the same owner, for reasons which have nothing to do with pbns or G.

It is only the general public we are concerned about.

We have some domains which, at this point, seem to have escaped - and may still be able to be used in the future.

But, because the whois site does not display their next update until some time in August, this means we will have to wait two months to know whether, in fact, those domains are safe to use.

Namesilo - privacy is not private - warning !!!

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