Re: GoDaddy deleting most ancillary registration contact information

[David Conrad via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>]

On Jul 19, 2025, at 5:41 PM, Mel Beckman <mel () beckman org> wrote:
> It’s not that I’m “going somewhere” with this comment. I’m just looking for factual data, not wild guesses. I’ll 
> accept “some” for now. 

They weren’t "wild guesses”.  As mentioned, my comments regarding registrars redacting for privacy was in relation to 
my discussions with law enforcement. This would appear to be corroborated by John McCormac’s post that pointed to 
https://www.dnib.com/articles/interisle-report-examines-domain-name-contact-data-availability which seems to confirm 
“most” (if not “if not all”). The TL;DR quote from that paper:

"Since 2018, registrars also have expanded and promoted free privacy proxy service offerings. Of the 20 largest 
registrars included in the study, which collectively account for more than 70% of gTLD registrations, a majority offer 
free proxy services, removing financial barriers to proxy use for the majority of gTLD registrants.”

Since my day job causes me to be somewhat involved in never ending registration data debacle, I did a quick check of 
the top registrars by market share John listed. It appears:

Godaddy (27.6% market share): privacy on by default for all eligible new domains
Namecheap (8.04%): privacy on by default for all eligible new domains
Tucows (includes Enom and Hover, 4.3%): on by default for all eligible new domains
Squarespace (formerly Google, 3.3%): on by default for all eligible new domains
GMO Internet (includes onamae.com and z.com, 2.37%): on by default for all eligible new domains
Dynadot (2.21%): on by default for all eligible new domains
Netsol: (2.16%): NOT on by default, a $9.99 added service
Gname: (2.12%): NOT on by default, free for all eligible new domains

(I was only able to find one other registrar that doesn’t have privacy on by default, Bluehost, but I didn’t bother 
figuring out their market share or doing a further, exhaustive survey)

Translating that to operational impact, according to the first line of the dnib.com paper, about "Nearly 90% of the 
internet’s generic top-level domain (gTLD) names do not have identifying contact information in the Registration Data 
Directory Services (RDDS) system […]”.

> Is every good scientist knows, the absence of data is not data, and the plural of anecdote is not data :-)

Ironically, the original aphorism was “the plural of anecdote is data” (see 
https://web.archive.org/web/20080523225000/http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0407a&L=ads-l&P=8874).  

Regards,
-drc

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

_______________________________________________
NANOG mailing list 
https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog () lists nanog org/message/JOG54NGYKDK5N4KENK4L3JPERRQ6OFTQ/