Gdpr And Domain Privacy
For European Union citizens, the personal information connected to your domain name is automatically protected by the General Data Protection Regulation .
ICANN also implemented the Temporary Specifications for gTLD Registration Data to adjust to the regulations of the GDPR. So even if your personal information is private, some data are still available to the public, such as:
- Your Internet Protocol
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How Can I Further Protect My Website
Protecting your public WHOIS information is just one aspect of securing your online presence. You can also opt to activate password protection for portions of your site which you do not wish to be publicly accessible. Last, but certainly not least, you may consider purchasing an SSL certificate for your website, so that your visitors can connect securely without worrying that their personal data may get compromised. You can check our article which outlines the differences between website password protection and SSL certificate encryption for even more information on the advantages each protective measure can offer.
What Is Domain Ownership Protection
Most of the time domain protection focuses on two main goals: hiding your contact information for privacys sake, and protecting you from threats of domain theft.
While many protections are in place to prevent domain hijacking, there are situations where if an account is hacked and the domain owner hasnt set up proper protection, there could be issues. While there are many layers of protection in place to help prevent this, it can happen in some circumstances.
The idea behind domain ownership protection is to add even more layers to make this extremely unlikely whether loss happens from negligence or from a bad actor.
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How Much Does Whois Protection Cost
You can get domain privacy protection while registering a new domain name with your domain registrar . They tend to offer it as an extra feature, usually priced between $2 and $20 a year. Thats a reasonable cost when you think about the extent of the risk it mitigates!
But do you really need domain privacy protection? Lets look at the reasons why it makes sense to get it.
What Is A Whois Lookup
As explained above, WHOIS is a public directory that holds all the records and personal information of all registered domains. Since it is a public directory, it can be seen and viewed by everyone in the world.
The WHOIS Lookup is a feature in the WHOIS directory that, if you type the websites name on, will reveal who owns and manages the domain name, including their names, contact information, address, etc., that they initially provided while registering for the domain.
Although the WHOIS lookup feature is an easy way to find relevant information on the Public WHOIS database, it can sometimes be used against you or harm you if your personal information is just a lookup away from literally everyone in the world.
For example, we search the domain registrant details for nike.com in the following screenshot.
Below, we can see who the domain registrar is, when the registration expires, and when it was last updated.
Scrolling further down, we can see the registrants name, which city theyre located in, and even access their phone number and email address.
Now, its not a big deal for a large company like Nike to make this information available publicly. However, if youre a small business owner, you need to be careful with the accessible information about your business, where its available, and why. And that is exactly why you need to hide domain information of your website from the publics eye.
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Can Everyone See My Information
If your website domain is not privacy protected, everyone can see your information. When you register your domain on the world wide web, it becomes a part of the global directory, called WHOIS, that makes your domains all registered information available to the public.
If you had integrated privacy protection when creating the website domain, your information would not be visible to everyone. However, if privacy is not protected, then your information is just a couple of clicks away from the rest of the world.
Increased Control Over Your Personal Information
When it comes to domain registration, you have to use your actual contact details for security purposes. The person or company listed as the named registrant will always be the legal owner from the standpoint of ICANN.
Using false contact information may lead to a legal dispute about who owns the domain name. Using legitimate contact information is essential, especially for businesses, as it can affect customer trust in your brand.
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Protection Vs No Protection
Above is what it looks like if you have no protection. As you can clearly see, this shows all of your personal information. Can leave you wide open for spam, unsolicited marketing contacts, and even allow your domain name to get hijacked.
Above is what it looks like when you have protection. You can see that your domain name, address, email, phone number, etc. is all hidden behind a proxy. Typically, the words Domains by Proxy, Inc are the owner, which isnt your real information. Makes it a lot harder for people to reach out to you by looking through your information. You are paying to mask your identity.
Below are a couple of options that I have seen other webmasters use to get around using privacy protection.
Privacy Protection Isnt Always An Option
Although Whois privacy service is available for almost all domains, some are unavailable due to registry restrictions.
Currently, this includes .ca, .ch, .cn, .co.in, .co.uk, .com.au, .com.es, .com.sg, .de, .es, .eu, .fr, .gg, .id, .in, .is, .law, .li, .me.uk, .net.au, .nl, .nom.es, .nu, .nyc, .org.es, .org.au, .org.uk, .paris, .sg, .to, .uk, .us, .vote, .voto, and .xn--3ds443g domains.
Privacy protection may already be in place for certain TLDs, or restrictions may be in place for specific geographic locations.
Take .us, for example. In 2005 the National Telecommunications and Information Administration requested that all registrants must make their contact information public. This was to help make sure that .us registrants followed the requirements, such as that they must be a US citizen or resident, when registering their domain.
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What Is Domain Name Privacy
Domain name privacy is a service offered by domain name registrars to keep your personal contact information from being publicly displayed in the WHOIS directory. That directory is a public database of all website domain names, which includes contact details about the owner of each domain, and can be accessed by anyone.
The WHOIS directory is maintained by ICANN , the organization responsible for introducing Top-Level Domains . ICANN requires that the following information be associated with each domain:
- Mailing address
Lets take a look at why youd want to keep your WHOIS information private, beyond just the fact that its exposed.
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Understanding What Domain Privacy Protection Is
To explain what domain privacy protection is, you first need to know what the ICANN and WHOIS databases are.
What Is ICANN?
ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. In the 1990s, the internet grew exponentially and had become so vast that it needed a formal organization to put policies and procedures in place.
And in 1998, ICANN was launched as a non-profit corporation based in Los Angeles. It currently operates the WHOIS database, and also receives input from communication providers and other internet-related organizations across the globe.
What Is the WHOIS Database?
When you buy and register a domain name for your website, you need to provide your personal details such as your name, email address, mailing address, and phone number.
These details are made publicly available in the WHOIS database .
This database is basically a list of all the registered domains. Anyone can search this database to find out who owns a domain name and see if a domain is available or not.
Aside from your personal information, the WHOIS database provides other details such as the registration and expiration date of your domain.
This database is very important as network admins can use it to identify and fix problems or to address various legal purposes.
What Is Domain Privacy Protection?
When you disclose your personal details on public records to everyone online, it also becomes available to hackers and malicious threats.
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Control The Flow Of Information
And if you are entirely willing to share your email account with whoever wants it, you may well not want them to know your personal contact information. And while its convenient to post whatever details you want on your websites support page, you cant deter anyone from viewing your confidential data if it is publicly accessible on WHOIS.
Some could enter false details while registering a new domain to escape the drawbacks without spending anything additional. WHOIS details lawfully and contractually decide who the administrator of the website is. So if youre ever dealing with legal or regulatory problems down the line, you might find yourselves in hot water when the bogus information is uncovered.
Benefits Of Domain Name Privacy Protection
You wouldnt want the simple act of creating a website to mean that all of your personal contact details are out there for everyone to see as you go about life trying to be cautious of whom you give your personal details to.
Are you still debating whether or not registering a private domain is worthwhile? Lets look at some of the reasons why you need it.
1. It cuts down on spam
If you want to secure your email and cut down on unsolicited messages from spammers, youll need to register for a domain name privately.
We are all bombarded with spam in several aspects of life, as you are well aware. Unknown senders send you emails promoting goods youd never purchase. Calls from unknown phone numbers.
Youre going to get spam anyway, so putting your email address and phone number in a directory makes it much easier for scammers.
With domain privacy, what happens is that in the WHOIS registry the domain registrar can have an alias email in lieu of your own, reducing the risk of phishing emails.
If you are using domain privacy protection, phishing emails seeking to acquire your usernames, confidential details, passwords, and other personal information will not enter your true email.
2. Protect yourself from identity fraud
Anybody can access your personal information if it is included in the WHOIS public archive. This includes those you dont want to be exposed to, such as envious friends, hackers, rivals, and anyone else with nefarious motives.
4. Keep scammers at bay
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A Couple Of Reasons Why You May Not Choose To Protect Your Domain Name
At this point, domain privacy protection probably seems like a no-brainer, so why is it that so many domain owners do not automatically turn it on? Well aside from the lack of education or potential costs associated depending on your registrar, protecting your domain also means less transparency. Which also means that your potential customers, business partners or people who wish to buy your domain name will have a harder time getting in contact with you.
Having your information out there shows your customers or potential business partners your contact info, in case they decide to dig deeper and head over to WHOIS to find it. A good workaround here is to ensure that your contact information is always displayed on your website , including at the footer of your pages and in a Contact Us page. Alternatively, if you have your domain name registered at NameSilo, you can control whether you want emails sent to the anonymized address forwarded to you.
Of course, in most cases, the benefits of domain name privacy will outweigh the transparency issue. But if youre trying to decide whether protecting your domain is worth it, then you should definitely take both arguments into consideration and solve for the potential limitations as much as possible.
How Do I Buy Domain Privacy Protection For A Domain That I Have Already Purchased
Getting your WHOIS record protected takes just a few steps which we have outlined below:
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Do I Need Domain Privacy
Do I need domain privacy protection? Newbies in the web hosting industry frequently ask this question. The answer to this question can be found here.
In todays world, it is hard to keep your personal information private. With the internet and social media, everything you do can be watched by anybody with an interest in knowing about you.
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But there are ways to make sure that your online life stays under wraps, and one of those ways is domain privacy.
Domain privacy prevents people from seeing who has registered a website or domain name because the registration information will only show up as private.
The downside of this is that if someone wants to contact you through email they wont know where to send it until they request more info on your site. But for some people, this might just be enough peace of mind.
If you want to make sure your websites registration is private, there are a couple of different ways of doing this.
Unfortunately, most paid services will offer you a different package depending on what you want to be private.
For example, if you just want the contact information to be kept private, you will be required to pay a smaller fee than if you want your domain name itself to be private.
How Is Domain Protection Different From Domain Privacy
Domain Privacy is automatically added to all eligible domains registered with GoDaddy. Domain Privacy will automatically replace their domain contact info with substitute details from our privacy partner, Domains By Proxy®. But protecting your domain is about more than keeping your contact info private. Domain Protection helps secure your domain by preventing unauthorized domain actions, such as transferring a domain or making DNS updates, and avoiding accidental domain expiration if your credit card on file expires.
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Do I Need Domain Name Privacy Protection What Top Benefits
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Do you know that, when you purchase a domain name at that time the details available with your domain name are publicly available.
One thing you should ask yourself, Do I really need domain privacy protection?
In the period of 2017-2018 year, there are nearly 2,000 million records containing personal information has founded for suspicious activity.
90% of data violation occurs with hackers and data attackers, for that reason you need to take the domain name privacy protection seriously.
In this post, we will see,
So, lets start with domain privacy protection.
Understanding The Need For Domain Privacy Protection
To understand what domain privacy protection is and why we need it, lets take an example from our everyday life.
When we open a bank account to keep our money and other assets secure we assume that the bank will cover all our security needs. However, with the need for security and added security features offered by banks, we may choose to opt for add-on security measures like digital passwords, fingerprint access etc. Why do we do this? The account is ours, why do we need added security?
The fact is, security breaches in all areas of life have always existed, and are on a continuous rise what we need are ways to mitigate them.
When we buy and register a domain name, we give all our personal information that is saved on WHOIS a publically available database. Domain privacy protection is that addon feature you invest in that hides your personal information and thus adds that extra security layer to protect you.
Hackers, cybercriminals, viruses, malware, spams and all these things that you want to protect yourself from in the digital space thrive on data and personal information. Data privacy protection helps you keep your domain name and personal information safe and hidden from all these possible threats.
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Safe From Jealous Competitors
Anyone who has a company or is dreaming about beginning one would do data analysis into the sector, and competitor analysis is a standard method component. Including the data in the WHOIS, the list makes looking up facts about your business so much simpler for rivals.
If youd rather keep your products apart in the hands of competitors, or you dont want to make it convenient for them to figure out a little more about your business, domain privacy is worth it. When your entire information is preserved for domain privacy security systems, you will be able to defend the rivals from using your data. You should also consider using a professional SSL certificate to ensure a safe browsing experience for your visitors.
How To Make Your Domain Name Private
Usually, itâs good to get domain privacy protection when you buy your domain name. Go through your domain name registrar and tick the relevant checkbox during the buying process to get this protection.
Itâs a simple process and adds only a small additional fee per year.
For instance, hereâs how you can get domain privacy protection when you purchase your domain name via Nexcess.
1. Enter the domain name youâd like to purchase on the domain registrar page.
2. Verify the domain youâd like to register and add any additional domains you want on the next page.
3. At the bottom of the screen, under Add-ons > General, check the box next to Whois Privacy.
4. Click Add to Cart and complete the checkout process for your new domain name â with privacy protection included.
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