GoDaddy recently sent out an announcement stating that on 18 May:
“We’re working on rolling out changes to better ensure your personal data is hidden in the public WHOIS database, for free. As part of that effort, we’re ending support for our Private Domain Backorder add-on product. We expect these changes to be live in early June.”
Paul Bindel, VP of Operations at GoDaddy clarified stating:
“Due to changing privacy regulations in the U.S. and around the world, GoDaddy is in the process of making some changes to align our offerings similar to what we did in GDPR regions.“
This means that most of the Whois contact information will be redacted like in GDPR regions. This includes email address, phone number, and mailing address.
This could have a big impact on domain investors who use Whois info to generate new leads. The new policy at GoDaddy will make it much more difficult to discover who the domain registrant is in order to provide them with a purchase offer on their domain.
This is already the case with Uniregistry. And given that GoDaddy recently acquired Uniregistry bringing the policies of both companies in line with one another makes sense.
This will be good for GoDaddy brokerage business as domain buyers will be forced to engage with them
It will mean domain owners will have to put a web contact form on their landing pages should they not wish prospective buyers to ask for GoDaddy assistance in buying the domain they want
I would never use GoDaddy
I once called them back when they had enquired about a domain I own and the dumb GoDaddy team member thought I was the purchaser and let slip that the purchaser was after both the .com and the .com.au !