Namesilo - privacy is not private - warning !!!

I guess things are no fine. This is the message I just received from Namesilo:

Due to a change implemented yesterday, all private domains are now issued a unique email address in WHOIS. You can do a WHOIS Lookup on any of your private domains and you will now see they are all unique.
 
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maecenas23 said:
I guess things are no fine. This is the message I just received from Namesilo:

Due to a change implemented yesterday, all private domains are now issued a unique email address in WHOIS. You can do a WHOIS Lookup on any of your private domains and you will now see they are all unique.
Click to expand...

Not exactly - whoisology.com does not update its records until August - some there's a two month wait for that particular site - and it won't remove the archives.
 
Hmm ... I've just noticed something strange ...

After checking the whois on most of my sites - and my friends and clients - I have noticed that in the archives, for April 2014 and prior, all the NameSilo domains displayed private whois - "[email protected]"

Then, from August 2014, they suddenly all have a random email address, which has been linked to the other domains in the same account.

So, it would seem that at some time between April 2014 and August 2014, NameSilo changed its whois privacy policy and, seemingly without the knowledge or consent of its customers, decided to assign the same random email address to every domain in the same account.

I have checked all my emails from NameSilo during that period, and did not receive any notification of a change of whois privacy policy.
And I certainly did not authorise this change.

NameSilo, would you care to explain ???
 
edgey said:
Hmm ... I've just noticed something strange ...

After checking the whois on most of my sites - and my friends and clients - I have noticed that in the archives, for April 2014 and prior, all the NameSilo domains displayed private whois - ""

Then, from August 2014, they suddenly all have a random email address, which has been linked to the other domains in the same account.

So, it would seem that at some time between April 2014 and August 2014, NameSilo changed its whois privacy policy and, seemingly without the knowledge or consent of its customers, decided to assign the same random email address to every domain in the same account.

I have checked all my emails from NameSilo during that period, and did not receive any notification of a change of whois privacy policy.
And I certainly did not authorise this change.

NameSilo, would you care to explain ???
Click to expand...

Yes, we made this change in June of 2014. We sent out an email on June 18, 2014 (the day of the change) with the subject "WHOIS Privacy Update". We also announced it via Facebook (I would post the URL to that, but I can't post URLs on this board, but feel free to look at our Facebook page for the post on June 18, 2014). At that time we also rolled out the option to revert to the old email address used prior to that change.
 
WHOIS Privacy update (don't worry - it's still completely free forever!)... We have changed our system to use a unique email address for all private domains as opposed to the same for all private domains. This will enable you to receive email via the address listed in WHOIS. You can specify the email address to receive such mail via the account maintenance page in your account. This will allow you to keep your domains private for any services that use WHOIS to validate your registration of a domain. All accounts are set to use [email protected] which is the same as they were prior to today so you will not notice any changes. We also change the email address for your private domains routinely to help combat spam.

Well, I didn't find any email, but I did find the Facebook announcement ... and I had to laugh ... the "verbiage" is as "clear" as mud.

" ... A unique email address for all private domains as opposed to the SAME for all private domains." Actually, it's the SAME unique email address for all private domains.

"This will allow you to keep your domains PRIVATE for any services that use WHOIS ... " Not exactly - they will all be linked to the same owner. Depends on your definition of "privacy".

"All domains are set to use [email protected] WHICH IS THE SAME AS THEY WERE PRIOR TO TODAY SO YOU WILL NOT NOTICE ANY CHANGES."

NameSilo, could you explain the last sentence - "you will not notice any changes". All my domains changed !!!

Even if I had received an email or read the FB announcement, it would not have made any difference - this "verbiage" doesn't make any sense.







 
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They also force park domains. It doesn't matter you changed nameservers a week ago.
 
Ugh, this sucks. Good looking out OP, i honestly never considered the idea that my PRIVATE domains could all be linked in such a simple manner. I wonder what other registrars do things like this?
 
Their name says it all, they silo all your domain names together. Never heard of this outfit nor would I ever use their services.
 
As noted above, we changed our system in early June so that all privacy-enabled domains have entirely unique email addresses. This is in addition to the fact that most people using our service who were concerned about this issue always had a manner to avoid the situation completely. We agreed that the best option was to simply ensure that all domains had unique email addresses so the change was made a few days after being brought to our attention. Thanks
 
ghat6 said:
Ugh, this sucks. Good looking out OP, i honestly never considered the idea that my PRIVATE domains could all be linked in such a simple manner. I wonder what other registrars do things like this?
Click to expand...

goldnote said:
Their name says it all, they silo all your domain names together. Never heard of this outfit nor would I ever use their services.
Click to expand...

You guys might want to read the whole thread.

NS basically thought most of their customers just wanted privacy from whois for privacy sake, they did not factor in all the users wanting to hide their whois info for the sake of PBNs. They now realise this and have the desired functions as default.

The "controversy" is over, all is well in the world again. If you want drama I am sure Pewep is posting another thread in the lounge as we speak.
 
namesilo1 said:
As noted above, we changed our system in early June so that all privacy-enabled domains have entirely unique email addresses. This is in addition to the fact that most people using our service who were concerned about this issue always had a manner to avoid the situation completely. We agreed that the best option was to simply ensure that all domains had unique email addresses so the change was made a few days after being brought to our attention. Thanks
Click to expand...

What if someone registers a few domains in the one transaction, are they still given individual emails?
 
I actually have discovered a similar issue but with NameCheap, not on NameSilo. I'm not sure if it is ARCHIVED information but WebsiteSherlock.com seems to be able to see through the WHOIS info. The reason why I say this because ever since I registered this particular site of mine, it had WHOIS privacy to begin with (so there's no chance this could be archived info). Yet, it still now sees contact information if I put this site on WebSher. On other sites, it won't show up the information.

I'm now starting to doubt NameCheap's WHOIS privacy after seeing this thread having a similar case with a different domain registrar.
 
just catching this thread now and was a bit of a shock.. luckily only 2 of my domains seem to have been linked prior to the new default option change. im glad their listened to the feedback and made changes (thanks op for bringing it to everyone's attention!), hopefully thats the end of that and i will still use ns (along with others) as they have a pretty simple system and have been reliable with good pricing.
 
I can only see an option for default privacy in my account and it's set to no by default
this is what you means
i have about 100 domain in name silo account
 
veheme said:
I actually have discovered a similar issue but with NameCheap, not on NameSilo. I'm not sure if it is ARCHIVED information but WebsiteSherlock.com seems to be able to see through the WHOIS info. The reason why I say this because ever since I registered this particular site of mine, it had WHOIS privacy to begin with (so there's no chance this could be archived info). Yet, it still now sees contact information if I put this site on WebSher. On other sites, it won't show up the information.

I'm now starting to doubt NameCheap's WHOIS privacy after seeing this thread having a similar case with a different domain registrar.
Click to expand...

I just checked a couple of my sites on whoisology and sherlock that I have registered with namecheap and they were both protected. All I got was panama info.
 
Many thanks to the original poster for picking this up. This is a showstopper for me and demonstrated that sometime you can't take these privacy claims seriously without due diligence. To me it's astounding that the managers at NameSilo could make such a decision to share WHOIS privacy emails within a single account, given that the account could contains many profiles and many contacts, making this privacy breach even worse than initially thought. It really beggars belief what their justification was in the first place - was it to save a bit of disk space, database space or license fees?

What gives away their incompetence and sneaky behaviour is that they had an Off-switch embedded somewhere in the settings with no prominent mention of it, so even experts like myself were unaware of it. Saying sorry now doesn't fix the problems this bad decision has already caused many customers, most of whom have not notices yet. BlackHatWorld is not a site many registrants would visit, so I dare say most customers never knew the problem existed, and no proactive mention was made by NameSilo to notify customer of such. I am staying well away from them.
 
june77 said:
Many thanks to the original poster for picking this up. This is a showstopper for me and demonstrated that sometime you can't take these privacy claims seriously without due diligence. To me it's astounding that the managers at NameSilo could make such a decision to share WHOIS privacy emails within a single account, given that the account could contains many profiles and many contacts, making this privacy breach even worse than initially thought. It really beggars belief what their justification was in the first place - was it to save a bit of disk space, database space or license fees?

What gives away their incompetence and sneaky behaviour is that they had an Off-switch embedded somewhere in the settings with no prominent mention of it, so even experts like myself were unaware of it. Saying sorry now doesn't fix the problems this bad decision has already caused many customers, most of whom have not notices yet. BlackHatWorld is not a site many registrants would visit, so I dare say most customers never knew the problem existed, and no proactive mention was made by NameSilo to notify customer of such. I am staying well away from them.
Click to expand...
This is 7 years old news. Isn't like that anymore.
 
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