So I have "Hidden" my domain information via Godaddy...

...or so I thought....

[yycowns]

Yet a competitor has found out that the domain is mine.

How do they circumvent this to find out the info? Is that feature in Godaddy useless to the none average user?

[whoisgregg]

Why do you think your competitor knows it belongs to you?

[Livenomadic]

Ya, you really need to provide WAY more details.

There are so many ways they could figure out, it all depends on your situation

[yycowns]

Was just talking to him the other day at a conference and he told me he knew that domain (among several others) was mine.

It has no links to my main pages or any pages that is associated with me. Yet he knew...

I am thinking it must be some extraneous service that is able to check the whois info even if it's cloaked?

[figment88]

maybe it was those comments you put in the HTML.

[martinibuster]

If you host them all on the same server then he could probably figure it out, easy.

[Livenomadic]

He could definitely be looking at yor HTML...

Similar structure, Special type of comments etc.. etc...

I bought he cracked godaddy.. there are far simpler ways.

[yycowns]

What are some of these 'easier' methods than cracking godaddy?

It can't be this site - it is not hosted where my main sites are, it has ABSOLUTELY no relation to anything I've done in the past. I have not put any "comments" on the pages either...

The only give is that the domain is registered under my name - but I paid godaddy for the cloaking...

Is there a service out there that will let you bypass such domain info cloaking?

[sean]

Was your info previously available, or did you hide it from Day 1?

[yycowns]

Day 1 - Since I bought the domain...

[encyclo]

To be honest, the guy could have just made an intelligent guess. It can be due to a number of things - I once identifed the author of a site because he made the same mis-spelling as on his main site. Same goes for writing style in general, or if you are in a specialised line of business where your competitors know what you sell and where you get it.

I would think it is very unlikely to verging on the impossible that he got the details from Go Daddy, who are a reputable company with a good track record. They are not going to get hacked that easily, and anyway, would this guy have gone to the extent of hacking a major domain registrar just to identify the owner of one domain?

If you really think it was them, report it to their customer service department and see what they have to say, but I think you are making some exaggerated and almost certainly unfounded allegations.

[yycowns]

Right.

What I am truly getting at however, is not whether Godaddy is legit, are they secure, etc.

I may just want to know if the cloaking of info is secure and that I am getting my $15's worth when I pay for that...

[encyclo]

I may just want to know if the cloaking of info is secure and that I am getting my $15's worth when I pay for that...

If you do a WHOIS on the domain, what does it say exactly? That's the only information your competitor has access to (as does everyone).

[jdancing]

If you have auto forward on the domain by proxy email you may have responded to one of their emails.

Why don't you ask Godaddy and see what they say. Or ask the competitor how they found out?

[edited by: jdancing at 7:50 pm (utc) on Oct. 8, 2004]

[whoisgregg]

It sounds to me like your competitor had a hunch it was you, mentioned it to you and gauged your response.

If you and your competitor know each other enough to talk at conferences and you look at each other's sites all the time, it wouldn't be hard for them to deduce your involvement. Sorry, it doesn't sound like it's any fault of Godaddy... :(

[yycowns]

Ok, thanks for the responses all.