Ask HN: NetRegistry – smells like extortion to me | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: NetRegistry – smells like extortion to me

2 pointsmickduprez5 comments

Has anyone created a new domain with NetRegistry lately? I created one 2 days ago and within 24 hours I was bombarded with emails from web developers offering their services. I suspected that this was related to my creation of the new domain but thought this was just a coincidence. I just received an email from NetRegistry with the subject line: "Want to stop getting unsolicited calls and emails?" and a link to there offer of domain privacy for $1 month!

This can't be coincidence!

Now it's not the cost that is the issue here, I have many other domain names with other providers (and some with netregistry) and I've never had this issue before. It's that this borders on extortion!

What do you think would be the best course of action to take here?

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I doubt NetRegistry were sending you that web dev spam - there's really no need for them too - it happens _all the time_. The spammers are trawling the newly registered domain lists and looking up the domain contact details via whois. Doesn't matter _who_ you register domains with this happens (I've got several this week from a domain I registered using AWS Route53).

Net Registry are _very_ marketing pushy, so they've almost certainly recognised this and are trying to monetise it - but I strongly doubt they're going anywhere near "extortion". This is (in my opinion) less like "Nice place you've got here, it'd be a pity if something happened..." but closer to "Hey, we noticed you've moved into a kinda dodgy neighbourhood - have you considered one of our great insurance plans?"

Yeah, I have no doubt NetRegistry aren't doing it directly. I've never had this happen with other registrations and I thought NetRegistry was a good company that was aware of this, I mean why couldn't they include this in the price? I would have paid even if it was $1 dearer. Anyway, I take your point about their marketing, thay could do a lot better though, thanks for your level headed response :)

I haven't registered a domain thru them for several years - but I'm close to 100% certain they did offer you that - along with all the other upsells you just clicked through thinking "just sell me my goddamned domain!" I'm guessing you didn't buy their $5/month webhosting offer or their email hosting or their web-site-builder service or, for all I know these days, their mobile phone plan and six steak knives...

Thanks for the comments, I'm not normally one to have a rant but this one ticked me off and I reacted. I'm still annoyed/baffled that they don't include this feature as standard practice, I mean really, how hard could it be to 'hide' this information (does it really cost a $1 a month to set a flag automatically (that can really be set just once)?)

It's a blatant grab for money and regardless of the organisation, it's disappointing and doesn't speak well for their business culture from my perspective (and I'll leave it at that :) ). thanks

Doesn't pretty much every registrar offer "WhoisGuard" or similar privacy products? I have it for a bunch of domains (mostly via Namecheap) for $2/year or something like that.

The few domains that I don't have it on do, indeed, receive tons of (mostly web dev / SEO) spam to the published e-mail address.

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