PSA - register a .us domain + no whois privacy = incessant spam in all forms
So I wanted a cheap domain and went with a .us domain. Was told that who is privacy is disallowed. Not ideal but didnt think it was a deal breaker.
a few days later I started getting bombarded with email , SMS messages and phone calls from companies wanting to sell me web development / graphic art services. It is bad. 10 phone calls today. I erased the SMS , probably the same amount. The emails were lighter as i assume my anti spam methods dropped most of them.
So I went back to the whois and 'updated' my info.
People must fall for this cause it is still ongoing but I cant imagine spending my money with someone who spams me in this fashion.
This is probably old news to you guys but maybe it will save someone. I work afternoons and didnt get much sleep today.
Comments
What?
When I had the domain lowendtalk.us, I only got doxed on LET because my info was public, and I was selling the domain on an auction: no spammer calls or anything like that.
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Lol. for $2.49 you can check it out yourself by registering a .us domain over at dynadot .
But now that you mention it I had a .us domain about 8 years ago, for a couple years, and never got spammed like what just happened.
It sorta went like this:
1. wanted some discount yubikeys and I had a cloudflare account. got rejected as I wasnt using the clouldflare
2. setup an account on here to post about my rejection.
3. got a cheap domain to utilize cloudflare to maybe get some discount yubikeys in the future. setup cloudflare
So wasnt sure if it was dynadot, cloudlfare or here that was suddenly spamming me. But the spammers had my full name and my phone number and then it hit me how the whois privacy is not available on .us domains.
Then later today I answered a call from one of the spammers.
1. typically delay , click, line transfer then someone came on
2. broken unintelligible english. No offense as I'm sure it wasnt their native tongue and I surely cant speak 2 languages.
3. He finally asked if I was the owner of mynewdomain.us
4. Then I ranted a bit about how I wouldnt spend any money with a whois spammer even if I wanted to.
I read somewhere that .us wont allow whois privacy. Not sure if it is a law or what.
I had also opened a complaint at [email protected] . Godaddy currently handles .us domain. Here is the reply:
Hello,
Thank you for contacting GoDaddy Registry Registrant Support.
Proxy, or privatized registrations, are not permitted under current policy.
The usTLD has an ongoing interest in ensuring that its top-level domain is administered in a secure manner and that the information contained within the authoritative database is reliable, accurate, and up-to date. One of the mechanisms to ensure the integrity of the .US namespace is the through the collection of true registrant information. The usTLD Registry employs an algorithm to detect the inadvertent or intentional registration of proxy, anonymous and/or private domain name registrations, and enforces a registrar’s obligation to not offer such services to .US domain name registrants.
https://www.about.us/faqs
Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.
This interaction is being tracked through a case number 01xxxx066 and reference ID ref:_00DxxxxxfQrm._5004v1rguhf:ref. Please refer to these numbers or reply directly to this message during future correspondence.
Regards,
Greg
GoDaddy Registry - Registrant Support
Support Email: [email protected]
--------------- Original Message ---------------
From: Redacted [Redacted]
Sent: 10/13/2022, 3:16 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: abuse of whois data
Since I registered a .us domain I have been abused via the public whois
data. Countless calls, SMS messages and emails to the data provided via
.us whois . Please do something to eliminate this hassle. thanks
Welcome to the Internet. You must be new here. 😉
So… you willingly registered a domain name with a TLD that explicitly prohibits the use of Whois anonymization and now you’re complaining about spam?
That sounds like problems I had like 10 years ago. When domain privacy was not really a thing. So, no, this is definitely not a new thing and has nothing to do with Dynadot, Cloudflare or GoDaddy. You’ve been lucky that this didn’t happen with your other .us domain.
Anyway, whois privacy is not a thing with .us, because these domains can only be registered by US citizens or registered companies. Bit backward.
thanks for the replies to my venting.
Yep it was new to me and didnt consider the repercussions to .us . The only whois trap I was aware of was the fake ' time to renew your domain' letter from someone that wasnt your registrar. Maybe they still pull that one also. Like I mentioned originally, a PSA for someone else like me. Maybe I was just grumpy cause they woke me up several times. LOL. Ok maybe shouldnt keep the phone by my bed.. etc etc. Sorry to waste the time of all you crusty veterans. :-)
It's okay. I believe it can be annoying, but then again ... I never felt like I want to enter my real phone number in domain ownership form, so all my domains contain unexisting phone number. Even those behind private whois.
I've resolved my spam with Microsoft 365.
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.uk technically does not technically allow whois privacy but, because of gdpr the information is not listed publicly anyways, alo it is a lot cheaper
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i imagine lots of us do this, but it's important to be aware that any fake info in your registration is grounds for them to revoke it. it's not a simple choice.
I ain’t reading all that, but I’m happy for you though. Or sorry that happened.
I don't see this as exclusive to .us domains. I have a few domains that I've used to catch those exact emails. Almost entirely from Gmail, almost entirely about web/app development. Pretty much a new domain and a working email on WHOIS and you're ready to go.
Do everything as though everyone you’ll ever know is watching.
One of the more popular ways of detecting a new domain in use is through Certificate Transparency logs. Since your domain doesn't have any certificates issued (https://crt.sh/?q=lowendtalk.us) it may have managed to slip under the radar.
The OP's domain was added to Cloudflare which would generate certificates and get spammer attention drawn to it.
Yeah maybe
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FWIW my new domain is listed at https://crt.sh/ . Over 10 times. Prolly cause I initially setup cloudflare while my origin was http only. then when I setup https on the origin, more certs were created . Lastly I updated the cloudflare config to reach out the origin using https. It is just a test site to get some discounted yubikeys, which worked out great. Did realize that when using the free tier of cloudlfare, the cert from the origin is not used for visitors, it is the clouldflare cert. So by my very limited understanding, clouldflare has access to all the https traffic, but this is a topic for another discussion.
the emails/ calls are down to 2 or 3 a day now. And since I dont answer every call, some of them might be other unrelated spammers, but the overall number of calling spammers is definitely up. Yea they woke me up today. A guy named Peter with good 2nd language english skills from IhungUpOnThemBeforeHeGotItOut company. I am a slow learner :-)
I use my hushed lifetime number for my whois number, and use
[email protected]email address for whois email. That way, I can just check those only in case I need it (domain ownership checking, etc.).Use a separate email address, get a PO box, and use a VoIP service like voip.ms to get a different phone number
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I had some domains without privacy a few years back and the email address i used there is still bombarded with emails from mostly gmail addresses about web dev services, also for some reason they will follow up because i am not responding
I've had a few .us and not gotten significant spam as far as I could tell. I do get normal phone spam but it doesn't seem related to web design or domains.
had a half a dozen calls this morning. the emails are fine but the calls are annoying. I answered 2 of them. one named my new .us domain but the other named an older .com domain. I did setup a lets encrypt cert with subject alt name which lists both domains. However cloudflare isnt using my certs. the clouldflare cert is is a wildcard cert for just the .us domain . However if they are scraping https://crt.sh/ it does list my cert that lists both domains in the Sub alt name. It is beginning to look like that is what they are doing .
I went ahead and setup DND on my phone during my sleeping hours, shoulda done that a long time ago. I sleep all day and stay up all night which makes things bad.
thanks for all the input. I had never considered losing the .us domain if you put fake info in there. Not a big deal in this case but is something to consider.