Calls in four days — 38 spam

This is what happens when you register a domain name without Whois privacy or redaction.

I’ve written a lot lately regarding the robocalls and telemarketing calls you get following registering a domain that doesn’t have redacted Whois information.

Over the past month or two, the volume of robocalls I get has decreased substantially. But when I accidentally registered some domains with public Whois information a week or two ago, the onslaught began.

The prior week was particularly bad. It was frustrating since I was busy painting and managing a remodel of my house, so I had to pay attention when my phone rang or dinged.

I received 38 such calls from Monday through Thursday the prior week. The high point was Monday with 13 calls. On a “fresh” normal day, I get just one or two spam calls, so almost all of the recent calls can be attributed to the domain registrations.

This is in addition to many SMS ads every day. I deleted most of them but was receiving 5-6 per day.

So my phone was being hit 10-15 times a day due to domain registrations.

My experience is not abnormal. Domain name registrars that do not redact phone numbers are allowing their clients to be barraged with unwanted solicitations.

The pool of spam targets is smaller now that GoDaddy is redacting information. That means that clients of registrars that aren’t redacting are going to receive even more solicitations.