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...

It's publicly available...

I'm not a lawyer, but know a few guys who do similar and are pretty "tow the line" sorts. I'm sure they asked a lawyer.

Take this with about half a grain of salt, though.

yes, but the impression i got years ago is you could pay to have full search ability

not sure if that was accurate or still available

spamming is illegal

harvesting is probably mostly legal, email marketing to the harvested list probably not so legal...

<sarcasm>
but obviously he is not intending to mail them, so you should be safe
:thumbsup
</sarcasm>

We'll be safe no matter what as we aren't doing the harvesting stuff ourselves :)

Just as gun manufacturers aren't charged with murder when one of their products kills a little black thug in Sanford :)

police brutality a big deal in Sanford?

No clue you'd have to ask one of the black dudes on GFY.

Being white I have never had issues with law enforcement anywhere in the country, but then I tend not to do things to antagonize officers of the law :2 cents:

The data contained in this Registrar's Whois database,
while believed by the registrar to be reliable, is provided "as is"
with no guarantee or warranties regarding its accuracy. This information
is provided for the sole purpose of assisting you in obtaining
information about domain name registration records. Any use of
this data for any other purpose is expressly forbidden without
the prior written permission of this registrar. By submitting an
inquiry, you agree to these terms of usage and limitations of warranty.
In particular, you agree not to use this data to allow, enable, or
otherwise make possible, dissemination or collection of this data, in
part or in its entirety, for any purpose, such as the transmission of
unsolicited advertising and solicitations of any kind, including spam.
You further agree not to use this data to enable high volume, automated
or robotic electronic processes designed to collect or compile this data
for any purpose, including mining this data for your own personal or
commercial purposes.

aren't all whois contact info emails displayed as images?

TERMS OF USE: You are not authorized to access or query our Whois
database through the use of electronic processes that are high-volume and
automated except as reasonably necessary to register domain names or
modify existing registrations; the Data in VeriSign Global Registry
Services' ("VeriSign") Whois database is provided by VeriSign for
information purposes only, and to assist persons in obtaining information
about or related to a domain name registration record. VeriSign does not
guarantee its accuracy. By submitting a Whois query, you agree to abide
by the following terms of use: You agree that you may use this Data only
for lawful purposes and that under no circumstances will you use this Data
to: (1) allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission of mass
unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations via e-mail, telephone,
or facsimile; or (2) enable high volume, automated, electronic processes
that apply to VeriSign (or its computer systems). The compilation,
repackaging, dissemination or other use of this Data is expressly
prohibited without the prior written consent of VeriSign. You agree not to
use electronic processes that are automated and high-volume to access or
query the Whois database except as reasonably necessary to register
domain names or modify existing registrations. VeriSign reserves the right
to restrict your access to the Whois database in its sole discretion to ensure
operational stability. VeriSign may restrict or terminate your access to the
Whois database for failure to abide by these terms of use. VeriSign
reserves the right to modify these terms at any time.

Scrapers use OCR for that.. :Oh crap

No clue.

Honestly I don't think I've ever had to use the Whois database for anything :/

Long story short, no you can't do it. In doing this you open yourself up for civil liability.

If you are caught they will sue the shit out of your client and you for writing the script in the first place.

I have seen some SEO Software takes the email of the whois domain automatically.

How do they get accurate results? I tried a test OCR scrape of one of my sites (No SEO software, just image source and simple OCR) and I got [email protected]...

The Pariah (my ex) works in Sanford. I bet that she had something to do with it. She is a horrible person.

Good advice above, plus:

1. You will violate many different ToS by doing so

2. It is incredibly annoying - we get thousands of spam emails a day to our catch-all WHOIS email address (we own hundreds of domains)

3. Depending on how you go about querying the WHOIS database, you will encounter captcha checks, query frequency limits and / or query count limits

Having said that though, I think your client would bear the brunt of any repercussions from such an endeavor, so if you are morally and ethically alright with it, code it up and make sure not to put your name on it...just skip our URL when you come to it :upsidedow

Actually you can be held liable. A person who creates a hidden compartment for someone they know to be a drug dealer is guilty of conspiracy to help in the commission of the drug dealers crimes. Namely to smuggle drugs.

The fact that you posted here about your thoughts this could be used for nefarious purposes and then still created the software demonstrates that you were complicit in its usage.

Even more annoying are those letters from Domain Name Renewal Service :mad: