Nominet site data collection

Nominet is running a short trial to collect data on whether .uk domain names resolve, where they are hosted, whether they are used for email and/or whether a web site is in place. As part of this, we will collect information about the landing page of your website so that we can categorise the website type (e.g. blog, parking page etc). We will not collect any more information than we would if we visited the landing page via a browser, and the data will be deleted at the end of the trial.

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GreyWing said:

Last time they did this type of thing they were seeing which domains had sites on them for the .uk launch.

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DarkSky said:

I spot check my server logs for some of my domains, one of which I've noticed on a few occasions has been visited by an address owned by nominet, on closer inspection the user-agent is 'http://www.nominet.org.uk/privacypolicy'.

So I went to that page, to see what it's all about. I had no idea nominet were "analysing .uk domain usage", and I'm not sure I like it.



They claim it is innocent, and say "To keep bandwidth to a minimum, only the landing page of a web site is visited".

Well this isn't true. Their bot is also loading JavaScript files included in the page, which I find very odd indeed.

You might think that they are loading the JS files to render the page, but as they are not loading my images or stylesheets, I don't think this is the case at all.

It worries me that nominet are doing this, I'm not aware of any other registry that does this sort of thing.

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DarkSky said:

... I'm not aware of any other registry that does this sort of thing.

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Sean said:

Jay, I applaud the transparency, it must pay dividends when it comes to trust.

Are you tired of NZ yet because there might be the perfect job going for you back in Blighty soon

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SecNam said:

I have blocked nominets IP from my parked domains. Is this a good idea or am i within my rights to do this.

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murph said:

Would have thought you can block any bot you like on your hosted domains?

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SecNam said:

Yeah but would it have an implications on this .uk crap going on.

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