Curt Hagenlocher on 16 Feb 2001 17:23:43 -0000 |
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[Nettime-bold] Network Solutions Sells Marketers its Web Database |
Network Solutions Sells Marketers its Web Database By Thomas E. Weber, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal The Internet's phone book is up for sale--and though the listings may represent a treasure trove for marketers, the move also risks a serious privacy backlash. At issue are millions of entries in the domain name database operated by the Network Solutions unit of VeriSign, Inc., Mountain View, Calif. It is, essentially, the master address book for the Internet. Since the dawn of commerce on the Web, companies that want their own dot-com addresses have registered with Network Solutions. Now Network Solutions is selling that information. "On your mark, get set, go!" gushes a recent advertisement in a newsletter for direct marketers. "Available for the first time ever. Approxi- mately 6 million unique customers, sliced and diced for you to target prospects, learn about a specific audience or retain customers. ...Take this information and run with it." Exactly what's for sale may come as a surprise to many of the individuals and businesses who have registered Web addresses. In addition to names, street addresses, and other routine information gathered when someone signs up for a domain name, Network Solutions promises marketers information on whether sites are dormant or up and running, whether they're set up for e-commerce --even whether a site has security precautions installed. Network Solutions says that while the sales pitch is new, it actually has been quietly selling such data for at least a year. Now, the company says, it is moving more aggressively to cash in on the information. "It's old wine in new bottles," says Doug Wolford, general manager for Web presence at VeriSign. The move underscores the growing pressure on Internet companies to find new sources of revenue. Now that the Net boom has slowed, many dot-com companies view customer databases as a tempting asset. But such strategies can be perilous given consumer concerns about privacy online. Last year, online-ad concern DoubleClick Inc. was forced to back off a plan to combine Web-tracking data with offline databases after the move triggered a firestorm. And when online retailer Toysmart.com shut down in May, a plan to sell its customer database provoked a similar controversy. Walt Disney Co., a Toysmart investor, offered to purchase and then destroy the data after the Federal Trade Commission moved to block Toysmart's plan. The Network Solutions database is a key part of the Internet's infrastructure. Internet computers rely on numerical addresses to route information around. When someone registers a domain name, the information is used to tell computers all over the Internet how to translate that dot-com address into the appropriate numerical address. Registrants also must provide the name, telephone number and email address of a technical contact for their site--information that can prove vital for someone trying to trace a hacker's attack or verify whether an online business is legitimate. Under its agreement with the U.S. government to operate the data- base, Network Solutions is required to provide public access to the data. Anyone can visit the Network Solutions site and look up the information on Web addresses one by one. And indeed, some marketers--especially those sending unsolicited "spam" email--have laboriously harvested information this way. But for marketing purposes, it's much more useful to have a com- plete set of data outright. Network Solutions offers marketers this option--for a price and under its guidelines, which include stripping out email addresses and forbidding the use of the infor- mation for email marketing. Mr. Wolford says the data are typically used by companies that want to send direct postal mail to Web businesses or simply want to merge the data with existing lists to flesh out customer dossiers. Network Solutions also allows its customers to opt out of the list and takes steps to insure that only businesses, not consumers, are included in the marketing efforts. While downplaying any privacy concerns, Network Solutions is telling marketers that its data are a great way to sell things, especially where small businesses are concerned. "Nobody offers a better snapshot of this hard-to-reach group ... over 80% of our customers are small businesses, representing every major small business category you could hope to reach," proclaims an infor- mation page at www.dotcom.com, the site Network Solutions uses to promote its data business. And the fact remains that it's impossible to obtain a Web address without registering for one--either with Network Solutions or with one of the other companies that popped up when the U.S. government opened up what had been a Network Solutions monopoly on dot-com domain names. Consumer advocates say any organized effort to use the data for purposes other than the intended goal of obtaining an address is troubling. "There's an increasing loss of faith in the ability to have your information used only for reasonable, legitimate purposes," says Lauren Weinstein, a privacy advocate who writes an email newsletter about cyberspace issues. Mr. Weinstein alerted his readers to the Network Solutions effort in a bulletin this week. Registering a domain name is a simple process that can be done online in minutes. Network Solutions charges $35 a year for each address, and asks for a contact name, phone number and email address that go into its database. So how does it know whether a site is up and running, or whether it is engaged in e-commerce, or any of the other pieces of infor- mation that it is promising to sell to marketers? Mr. Wolford says the company sends software "robots" out onto the Web, using much the same method that search engines use to catalog sites. Those robots can look for key phrases such as "online ordering" or "credit cards accepted" to determine whether a site has e-commerce. -- Curt Hagenlocher curth@motek.com _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold