
Ask HN: NetRegistry – smells like extortion to me - mickduprez
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:
&quot;Want to stop getting unsolicited calls and emails?&quot;
and a link to there offer of domain privacy for $1 month!<p>This can&#x27;t be coincidence!<p>Now it&#x27;s not the cost that is the issue here, I have many other domain names with other providers (and some with netregistry) and I&#x27;ve never had this issue before. It&#x27;s that this borders on extortion!<p>What do you think would be the best course of action to take here?
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bigiain
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?"

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mickduprez
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 :)

~~~
bigiain
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...

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mickduprez
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

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jlgaddis
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.

