GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - View Single Post - Question To The Great Legal Minds Of GFY Re: WHOIS

Webmaster Advertising · 06-27-2013, 01:29 PM

What is the legality of harvesting data from the Whois database?

Just had a client contact us asking us to build him a script that will take 200,000 URLS of his choice (he already has the list of urls), check the Whois record for those domains, if the email address is present in Whois, the script should harvest and store that email address and match it in a database to the domain name.

This just sounds fishy/spammy to me, is there anything 'illegal' in what this guy wants us to create or is it just morally/ethically wrong?

In other news, is this even possible to do? I was under the impression the Whois databse only allowed a certain amount of enquiries before it blocked you?

Thanks inn advance for any insight you can offer on this subject...

06-27-2013, 01:29 PM
Webmaster Advertising So Fucking Banned Join Date: Sep 2003 Posts: 1,360	Question To The Great Legal Minds Of GFY Re: WHOIS What is the legality of harvesting data from the Whois database? Just had a client contact us asking us to build him a script that will take 200,000 URLS of his choice (he already has the list of urls), check the Whois record for those domains, if the email address is present in Whois, the script should harvest and store that email address and match it in a database to the domain name. This just sounds fishy/spammy to me, is there anything 'illegal' in what this guy wants us to create or is it just morally/ethically wrong? In other news, is this even possible to do? I was under the impression the Whois databse only allowed a certain amount of enquiries before it blocked you? Thanks inn advance for any insight you can offer on this subject...