Another disturbing Whois data service

Internet marketer selling access to whois data.

Many people are selling cheap access to whois information culled from recently registered domain names. Now an internet marketer is getting into the act.

A fresh service called FreshDomainLeads.com promises members daily sales leads in the form of whois records of newly registered domain names.

A video for the service states it provides ‘legal access’ to the bulk information and that ‘domain name registration info is public by law’.

I think they’re using ‘legal’ and ‘law’ loosely here, but the collection and sale of this data for marketing purposes seems to violates a lot of Terms of Service.

Based on the demo video, it looks like the system might only pull in data from registries operating a thick whois, meaning the data is stored by the registry rather than the registrar.

One pitch video claims that these leads are great for affiliates to push services like webhosting, web design, and internet marketing. In other words: more unsolicited email.

The FreshDomainLeads.com domain name was registered by Xodo Inc. Xodo Inc is a fresh Jersey firm organized by Andrzej Madloch. The business later filed an assumed name as Cody Moya, a popular internet marketing products promotor.

The sales page pulls all the tricks from internet marketing sales letters, counting a countdown clock for an imminent price price increase. Of course, once the countdown clock hits zero, it just resets.

If there’s any consolation for domain name registrants tired of being bombarded with spam, to software limits users to 100 whois contacts per day.