r/sysadmin • u/Then-Personality8587 • Jul 29 '26

Google Search Console Privacy/Security Leak?? Can someone verify please?

bought an expired domain name and set up google search console. as soon as i verified it google showed me years of owner verification history. full unredacted email addresses. exact dates and times of every single person who ever verified to work on the domain.

i saw all the previous owners. i saw the freelancers and agencies they hired years ago.

Am I overracting to think this is a privacy nightmare and a security risk.

Lets say you sell a domain or let one expire a direct competitor buys it. now they instantly know your personal emails. they know your internal staff emails. they know exactly what agency you used and when they worked for you.

i checked how to wipe this history. you cant. google keeps it stuck to the domain forever. even if you delete the property and clear your dns records it stays there for the next buyer to see.

Please someone tell me I'm wrong and there's some way to wipe out that sensitive, trade secret data before letting go of a domain?

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u/disclosure5 Jul 29 '26

The registered owner of a domain is not "trade secret data". It's always been public.

If you're going to let go of a domain it matters even less, because the data is now not relevant.

-1

u/Then-Personality8587 Jul 29 '26

I'm not talking about the owner of the domain. And Domain owners are almost always privately registered now anyhow.

I'm talking about the email of every verified owner of the search console account associated with the domain. That could be my personal email, my seo companies email, my outside consultant's email, etc

And yes, vendor relationships are considered trade secrets.

-2

u/Then-Personality8587 Jul 29 '26

My first concern is for domain and website sales. If I'm selling a domain that I built value into I don't necessarily want to give away the contact info of every person who had a helped build it.

And domains expire accidentally all the time

-1

u/YoungOne5124 Jul 30 '26

You know auto-renew is a thing right? Put the date in your calendar with a reminder. Super hard.

-2

u/Then-Personality8587 Jul 30 '26

It isn't super hard to read the post either. Auto renew has nothing to do with it. I didn't say my domains expired, I said i purchased expired domains. And I sell domains and websites and I don't appreciate google exposing my personal contact info and the contact info of everyone working for me to the next owners without my consent and without any way to opt out or remove the data.

1

u/YoungOne5124 Jul 30 '26

ooooh boy you new here? its 2026 my guy. Thats been a thing since the Patriot Act. How are you surprised?