Advertising on WHOIS?
Crazy ideas by Network Solutions LLC
WHOIS is a simple TCP-based protocol that is widely used to provide human-readable information about domain names, registered networks, NIC handles and more. It dates from the old-ages of the Internet and is described in RFC 3912.
Usually you will use WHOIS to lookup the technical or administrative contact of a domain or network in case of technical (like DNS problems, routing trouble) or legal issues. Today I had a look at a .com domain and what I received was something like this:
$ whois ibm.com
Registrant:
International Business Machines Corporation
New Orchard Road
Armonk, NY 10504
US
Domain Name: IBM.COM
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Promote your business to millions of viewers for only $1 a month
Learn how you can get an Enhanced Business Listing here for your domain name.
Learn more at http://www.NetworkSolutions.com/
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Administrative Contact:
DNS Admin, IBM
IBM Corporation
New Orchard Road
Armonk, NY 10504
US
+1.9147654227 fax: +1.9147654370
Network Solutions has long been known to seek additional revenue from their NIC services by adding "creative" features, but selling ads in WHOIS (obviously available since the end of last year) just sounds crazy.
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