DomainTools Blog

The biggest goal an ecommerce site has is to earn the trust and confidence of the consumer. Before making a purchase or signing up for a program at a new company, I am in the habit of doing my due diligence to investigate the company. I check how many years they have been in business using the WHOIS record. Then I Google for them using the keywords of mistrust such as [insert company name] “COMPANY scam” and “COMPANY warning”. If people describe really bad situations, then I stay clear.

This evening I checked out Auction Ads - I had heard about the company in a blog post. But while doing my background checking it appears they block access to see who the company is runs by. They are using Domains by Proxy from GoDaddy to block their WHOIS information from appearing in the public. I have to ask, “what are they trying to hide”? Last time I saw this it turned out to be an ecommerce site run by some scammers out of India. I looked at the WHOIS history and it says a person named James Hagans was the last registered owner of the website and he lived at “75 Blenheim Rd, Columbus, OH, 43214″.

Check the WHOIS before doing any sort of ecommerce transaction. You never know what you are going to find. I never enter my credit card information on any website I find which hides who they are. They want my credit card information but they will not tell me who they are… I think not.

Here is the WHOIS for Auction Ads.com, I am glad to report there is some talk in sub-committees at ICANN for making it a requirement to show WHOIS information on ecommerce sites. I have heard ShoeMoney owns the site, but he commented that “Its actually a joint venture between my parent company and Media Wiz (owner of text link ads, review me, etc..)“. Honestly it is hard to say what the real truth is because it is hidden.

I think one day I will make a list of ecommerce websites that hide their identity. Any other websites out there that look legitimate from the HTML side but they look shady on the WHOIS side?