All Out Spam Assault on New Regs

[Skinner]

I recently regged a few .com's and mistakenly left my personal phone number on show. Today I have had 19, yes NINETEEN calls from web design, logo makers, marketing and seo masters. I started blocking the numbers and now its none stop private numbers.

God knows how many emails, Creative Touch, Website Design, Online Development, Interactive Web Media Service, Affordable SEO Services, Mobile Website Design, App Development, Logo Design, Website Analysis, Mobile Friendly Websites, Web Design and Develoment, Website Designing, Low Cost Website Design, Website with Extensive Features, Build Something Awesome Website, Making Best Website or Apps, Mobile App and Web Design, Looking for Web Designer, SEO Checklist Status, thats just those which made it to the spam bin in the last 18 hours, theres another half dozen made it into the main inbox, who knows how many were actually filtered out.

Its now 20 missed calls, and 1 voicemail.

Moral of the story, use privacy services and don't forget :/

This is the first time I've had it this bad, how long has it been this bad ?

 

[Edwin]

I get between 50-100 spam messages a day, every day, to the email addresses that appear in Whois records.

 

[ian]

What extension domains were these? I've never had any spam from .com's I own with one of my email addresses on; albeit my telephone number is just load of zeros.

 

[mat]

I have had this recently with .com's but I use a seperate throw away mobile number for domains/business. They seem to tail off after a few days of ignoring.

 

[Skinner]

They were all .com, name.com had a blackfriday £3 code so I picked a bunch up, mostly family names.

Calls/Emails still coming in, not all international numbers, there are some local numbers and uk numbers too.

 

[Edwin]

Is your phone number registered with TPS?

 

[mat]

Is your phone number registered with TPS?

We did this for our homes landline and to be honest it worked really well. Very rare to get a spam call now.

 

[Edwin]

We did this for our homes landline and to be honest it worked really well. Very rare to get a spam call now.

Yep. I think I get one a year on average. And they drop the phone like it's radioactive when I say "It's weird that you're calling me because this number is registered with TPS." Click.

 

[Adam H]

What registrar did you use ? I normally use Namecheap and occasionally get one spam mail on .com's. But I have some clients with the likes of 123 reg who have been inundated with spam services, 70% of the time id say are private whois so It wouldn't surprise me if the details are sold by the registrar rather than them being scraped somehow.

*note , I'm assuming I have no proof of that.

 

[ian]

What registrar did you use ? I normally use Namecheap and occasionally get one spam mail on .com's. But I have some clients with the likes of 123 reg who have been inundated with spam services, 70% of the time id say are private whois so It wouldn't surprise me if the details are sold by the registrar rather than them being scraped somehow.

*note , I'm assuming I have no proof of that.

I'd agree that is probably the case, great way of selling privacy services at a 500% markup!

 

[Edwin]

They don't have a sneaky checkbox somewhere in the checkout process?

Most ecommerce sites seem to have "Share your details with selected partners" (or similar wording) and the sneakier ones use a double or triple negative wording, or assumed opt-in.

The worst culprits are the ones that have both opt-in and opt-out marketing options comingled on the same form. (I notice hotels do this a lot at registration too - tick this box to allow our partners to contact you by post, tick that box to stop our partners contacting you by email) Unless you read the small print like a hawk, you're bound to be tripped up at some point...

 

[Edwin]

It's basically a clasic example of the "tragedy of the commons" - individual merchants may rationalise that what they're doing isn't really so bad - it's only one more mailing list. But each time it happens, it erodes trust in ALL merchants and in ecommerce in general.

 

[Blossom]

They don't sell your details on. It amazes me how many people think that they do, but they don't. It's pure WHOIS spam. Registrars get the phone calls and emails too when they forget.

 

[Skinner]

It were with Name.com, I've not had this level before on any other reg. I were wondering if someone has set up a new scraping service.

Can't be that hard to download the new days list, parse out the new regs, then run the whois and extract the data and sell said data ?

I reckon I could knock up similar code in a few hours, just need to see what whois servers and rate limits are.

I am registered with TPS, which also doesn't stop the holiday compo, or new boiler people calling either :/

 

[dog]

It were with Name.com, I've not had this level before on any other reg. I were wondering if someone has set up a new scraping service.

Can't be that hard to download the new days list, parse out the new regs, then run the whois and extract the data and sell said data ?

I reckon I could knock up similar code in a few hours, just need to see what whois servers and rate limits are.

I am registered with TPS, which also doesn't stop the holiday compo, or new boiler people calling either :/

Coupon code - PRIVACYPLEASE - will give free privacy at Name.

Doesn't expire can be used on an unlimited number of domains.

There is also this service.

http://anonymize.com/