That might be more dangerous. If you trust GoDaddy, and do a search in an HTTPS session with them, there's little risk a third-party could learn of your interes

That might be more dangerous. If you trust GoDaddy, and do a search in an HTTPS session with them, there's little risk a third-party could learn of your interest/idea and snap up the name. OTOH, dns and whois are unencrypted protocols. Eavesdroppers could see your lookups. Depending on which DNS or WHOIS servers you are consulting, their administrators may be untrustworthy. For example, many whois installations default to asking NetworkSolutions, who at one point (2008) was definitely front-running by their own admission.