GoDaddy Does Not Sell Customer Information

GoDaddy LogoI get a ton of robocalls and spam text messages offering discounts and promo codes for web design, logo design, and web development services. This spam is annoying and can be time consuming to deal with, but I am accustomed to it because my Whois information is public. Some people seem to blame their domain registrar for this spam, but I believe it is usually done by third parties who contact registrants of recently purchased  domain names.

I recently came across a post on LinkedIn that essentially accused GoDaddy of selling their information. The person who wrote the LinkedIn article/comment said he believed that GoDaddy sold his information and he was now being contacted by other companies offering their services to him. In a subsequent comment this person mentioned that his domain name was privately registered. I did not follow up with this person, nor did I verify anything he had written to learn more details about his situation.

From my perspective, it would not make sense for GoDaddy to sell its customer information to third parties because the company offers many of these services already. Even in a situation where GoDaddy did not offer a particular type of service, it would not make sense for the company to sell customer data because third parties could conceivably try to win other business from GoDaddy by offering domain registration, hosting, web development, or other high margin services that GoDaddy offers its customers. Selling customer data seems like it would entail far greater risk than reward.

To get to the bottom of this, I reached out to GoDaddy’s public relations team to ask if GoDaddy sells data, and the answer I was given is “no.” In response to my query, Kevin Kreuser, Senior Assistant General Counsel at GoDaddy, shared the following statement with me:

“GoDaddy does not sell, rent or share customer lists or customer information with any third party except those that serve as a contracted vendor, agent or service provider on GoDaddy’s behalf. In such case, the third party may only utilize the information for the limited purposes for which it was shared, as defined by GoDaddy and in accordance with our Privacy Policy, and may not otherwise use, retain or share the information for any other purpose.

GoDaddy has worked very hard over the past 20 years to earn the trust of millions of customers around the world. These relationships are precious and we strengthen them by being steadfast in our commitment to protecting their privacy and respecting their communication preferences.”

It doesn’t make sense for GoDaddy to sell its customer data, and the company has confirmed its position about this.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

8 COMMENTS

  1. I’ve never believed for one second that GoDaddy does anything like that.

    And on a completely unrelated side note:

    One of the biggest and most well known of the “big three” blogs has begun doing “copy and paste” hatchet jobs on my comments, in effect resulting in a gross and false misrepresentation and distorition of the posts I have been writing which are ultimately intended for the benefit of the industry. I’ve already been in email communication with the famous blog publisher about it since yesterday, but it was done again since that and is appearing there still no less. Sad. If it remains that way I will be saying which and who.

  2. Neither GoDaddy nor any registrar has to actually sell their information. However a rogue employee is often in a position to share basic customer data, often for a profit. There’s also these brief moments where one forgets to enable domain privacy for a minute or two…

    A way to know better about where a leak comes from is using tagged email addresses. This at least reveals the likely start of the chain.

  3. All excellent points! “Tagging” your email addresses (by whatever means) is an excellent way to catch culprits… sometimes, even decades later!

    I personally use catchall email, and then set-up every account, service, etc. to which I ever subscribe with a “tagged” email address that actually identifies the entity by name: for example, “BankOfAmerica@MyDomain.com” or “DomainInvesting@MyDomain.com”

    I’ve been known to catch Fortune 500 companies egregiously violating their own “official” privacy policies — as I said, sometimes a decade or more after the fact (when they suspect I’ve long since fallen asleep at the wheel and forgotten how to track my own subscriptions). I take great pleasure watching them scramble to apologetically fix the “accidental oversight”!

  4. Being a dinosaur, my genes dictate that that my WhoIs record utilizes a landline, a/k/a a telegraph of sorts. Since we dinosaurs have trouble being understood by humans the telegraph function – mostly pushing buttons on the phone – works, at least for talking to other dinosaurs.

    Being a clever dinosaur I use a “phone answering machine” along with a form of caller ID. I don’t know whey it’c called an answering machine because it never answers my questions.

    My phone answering automatic message goes like this: “Hi. Either your blocked your identity or I don’t recognize your number. At the tone please start talking. If I recognize you I’ll pick up. If you’re a robo-caller I won’t.”

    Since we dinosaurs move slowly and often are preoccupied with grazing I have a phone base and 4 wireless units spaced about my cave and various feeding areas, making it easy to see that “Nowhereville IL” is calling. The machine does the rest.

    • My claws make it difficult to type words with apostrophes. I have no excuse for “whey”, that being a dairy product that we dinosaurs mostly abhor. We do, howover, fancy the idea of a meat sack – called a cow or bull – but they haven’t yet evolved in our times . . and, yes, I’m responding to this from 60 million years ago. Don’t ask. Our technology is way beyond your feeble comprehension.

      Okay. Gotta go. There’s been a sighting of a new fireball in the sky and everyone is planning picnics for the event.

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