Reason : You Might Get Bombarded With Unwanted Sales Calls And Even Get Scammed
+ Now, if your personal information is out there for the world to see, theres nothing stopping pushy marketers out there from getting hold of your details and trying to reach you. You could get a ton of calls from anyone who wants to sell something.
+ On top of that, you risk getting scammed. If these sales folks know your details, they could potentially scam you into buying things you dont need.
Is Domain Privacy Protection Available For Every Domain
Not every domain can get privacy protection it depends on the top-level domain you use.
Domain name privacy is usually available for most common top-level domains, such as .com, .net, .org, .online, and .co. However, you might find that its not available for domain extensions such as .mobi, .asia, .istanbul, and .space.
This is because some registrars dont allow the service due to some of their rules and regulations.
For the complete list of TLDs that cant be protected, check our guide on how to enable WHOIS privacy protection.
An Introduction To Domain Privacy
When you register a domain for your website, youll usually have to provide your full name, contact information, and address. Then, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers requires registrars to publish that information in a public directory.
This database, called WHOIS, acts as an address book for the internet. Anyone can use this public resource to find out who owns a specific domain:
You might use this directory to find available domains, or to contact the owner of a domain youd like to buy. However, hackers can also take advantage of this service to access and exploit sensitive information.
To avoid this issue, you can implement domain privacy. This is a service that replaces your contact details with forwarding information to a proxy server.
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Selling Of Your Personal Data
The dark forums are filled with people trading other peoples personal information for nefarious reasons.
It is even worst when ads company engage in something called data scraping to collect your personal data from publicly available WHOIS records, in order to bombard you with sales pitch or sell it to third parties.
Domain Privacy Protection Why & How
The need for essential website security is not new. Every year and every day the number of people being affected by cyber-attacks and losing out on critical data and valuable information is constantly rising. While there are many tools, add-on products and services that once can use to secure their website, it all starts with domain privacy protection. After all, buying and registering your domain name is the first step to building your website.
We recommend buying add-on products like SiteLock to prevent cyber attacks, give your site visitors the trust of security they need and instantly protect your website from any online breaches. With SiteLock you are instantly notified about possible threats and your website goes through regular scans to identify any malicious activity. Just like SiteLock you can buy add-on protection for your domain name as well, heres how:
How can you get domain privacy protection?
When you choose a professional and reliable hosting provider or domain registrar you can buy domain privacy protection as an added security feature. At a minimal cost, you can instantly ensure complete protection for your domain name. For example, if you buy and register your domain name from BigRock you can instantly buy Domain Privacy Protection as well.
Why do you need domain privacy protection?
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What Is Domain Privacy Protection
While the details of domain owners are considered public information, the registrar is required to record specific pieces of data about the registrant for the public record, this what is known as the WHOIS database.
The WHOIS database contains the personal information of owners of domain names, and domain privacy protection is an extra service that protect your personal information and keep it hidden in the WHOIS database from the rest of the world.
Therefore, with domain privacy protection enabled for your domain, whenever someone searches for your domain name in the WHOIS records, it will display information belonging to your registrar instead.
Domain privacy protection is enabled during the process of registering a new domain, and it usually comes as an extra feature, often priced around $5 a year, which is quite reasonable when compared with the risk of exposed public information!
Hide Your Information From Competitors
Whether youre a small or medium-sized business, youre bound to have some competitorscompetitors whod like to find out exactly who you are, where you are, and how to get in touch with you.
Lets face it, everyone stalks their competition in one way or another, but having your information available publicly on websites such as WHOIS makes it easier to do so. And if youre a small business owner trying to make ends meet, any information leak could prove to be extremely costly for you.
Domain privacy protection is there to help you lower the risk of your competition stealing your contract information, and using it for their own business strategies.
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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
- Domains registration and expiration dates
Whats In The Whois Directory
The public WHOIS database is a public directory that maintains a record of all domain registrations online. This includes domain registrant details, verifications, expiry, renewal dates, and more.
Its very similar to how an asset you own is registered under a governing authority or register. Think about your car or your house you wouldve registered it under a governing authority that records ownership, its start date, and duration.
However, what would happen if this information became available to the rest of the world? For an average user, this can create a big problem.
The main benefits of privacy protection are providing you privacy and protecting your data. But you do get many benefits from purchasing the service, such as a lock icon on web links, complete encryption on the transfer of information, rid of spam calls and emails, and much more.
If you do not have privacy protection on your domain, the ownership of any domain on the internet can be traced using the WHOIS lookup feature.
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What Is Domain Name Privacy Protection
Domain privacy protection, sometimes called WHOIS protection, is an add-on service with domain name registration that allows you to keep your name and contact information private.
Every time someone registers a domain name, the domain registrar you go through is required to provide details about who the new website owner is to the ICANN WHOIS directory. That ensures if a website does anything against the law, theres a way to track down the website owner.
But it means that every person who owns a website faces the possibility of exposing important personal information to the whole wide web, including your physical address, phone number, and email address.
For anyone who doesnt feel comfortable with that, domain privacy protection provides the option to have your registrar submit their contact information in place of yours. It keeps you on the right side of ICANNs requirements, without exposing your personal information to the world.
Whois Domain Privacy Availability
Not all domain extensions are allowed to have a private WHOIS. for the entire list.
In March 2005, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration said that all owners of .us domains would not have the option of keeping their information private and that information must be made public.
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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 To See If You Already Have Domain Privacy
Now that you know about the benefits of securing your domain, youll likely want to know how you can do it. If you already have a domain, its essential that you check to see if you already have this service before you proceed.
To do this, navigate to the ICANN lookup tool and enter your domain name:
This will list specific details about your domain registration. Scroll down to Contact Information and see if there are any privacy redactions:
If any personal information is obscured, you likely have domain privacy. You could also look for a forwarding email address or generic contact details. However, if you see personal information that you want to hide. It may be time to get a domain protection plan.
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It Prevents Scam Phone Calls
Phone numbers are also what telemarketing companies tend to take from the WHOIS directory. When your phone number is publicly available, theres a chance youll be flooded by various marketing and sales calls.
A scammer might also contact you, marketing fake products and services. Or worse, offering domain registration renewal services when its your domain is nearing the expiration date. Contact your registrar first before purchasing services or providing information on these types of calls.
If you enable domain privacy, your phone number wont be shown in the contact details section, protecting you from spam calls and scammers.
Do I Need Privacy Protection For My Domain
The quick answer is no. You dont need privacy protection for your domain. If youre comfortable with your personal information being exposed, then you dont need it. But if you want to keep your information private, then adding privacy protection to your domain is a good idea.
In fact, here are 10 reasons why you may need privacy protection for your domain:
1. Youre a high-profile individual who doesnt want your personal information out there for everyone to see.
2. Youre worried about identity theft and dont want your personal information floating around the internet.
3. You dont want spam emails coming to your personal email address.
4. You dont want telemarketers calling you day and night.
5. You dont want your credit card information or other financial information being stolen.
6. Youre worried about someone hacking into your website or email account.
7. You dont want people to be able to find out where you live or work.
8. You dont want people to be able to see your phone number or other contact information.
9. Youre worried about government surveillance and dont want your information being collected.
10. You simply dont want your personal information out there for anyone and everyone to see.
Privacy protection for your domain is important for a variety of reasons. If you have any concerns about your personal information being made public, its best to err on the side of caution and add privacy protection to your domain.
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What Is Domain Privacy Protection Why Is It Important
After knowing how to choose a good domain name, you can register a domain name with entering your entire personal information including name, phone number and email address can be immediately viewed by everyone. When it comes to buying a domain name, you have to fill in your appropriate contact information otherwise, the domain name registration can be terminated.
This information is targeted by telemarketers and spammers which results in unwanted contacts. You also have to face the risk of identity theft and other fraudulent activities by the stalkers and harassers. To protect your information, you can purchase the domain privacy protection when you are registering a domain name. This article is going to tell you what is domain privacy protection and will explain its importance in detail.
Because You Can Avoid Competitors Whore Doing Market Research
Lets face it: we all try to stalk our competition while were doing our market research. If youre a business owner, youll know that there are competitors out there who want to find out exactly who you are, where you are, and how to get in touch with you.
With such valuable information, they can gain insight into your business and the way you operate, and you could lose your competitive edge as a result.
While there are many ways for your competitors to research you, having your information publicly available makes it that much easier for your competitors to steal your contact information and use it for their own business strategies. Investing in domain privacy protection will make it much harder for them to do this.
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Reason : You Will Get A Ton Of Spam Emails
+ Its not just sales calls you can get. Its also a ton of spam emails you open yourself up to by leaving your personal data exposed. Every spammer out there knows how to find personal data on public directories, and email is the easiest channel to target small business owners.
+ Are you already receiving a ton of spam you havent subscribed to? Have a look at your spam inbox and count the amount of emails you get, and from where. If youre receiving junk emails, its because your details are lying exposed for spammers to use.
Godaddy Gives Too Little Control
GoDaddys server back end is difficult to use and limited in functionality.
Which basically means that as a developer, it takes me more time to complete tasks.
If I want to deliver results for my client, I need the flexibility and ease of use that an industry standard admin interface, like cPanel, provides.
Unfortunately, GoDaddy gives users a proprietary admin interface that is more interested in selling you more GoDaddy products than in giving you the tools you need.
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Your Website Could Get Hacked
If your personal information associated with your domain and website are exposed, it places your website at risk. And hackers could leverage on such exposed information to hack into your online accounts.
Theres a high probability that your information could fall prey to fraudulent domain transfer also, that is, someone else could break into your domain cPanel and transfer your domain to their name, even without your consent.
Reasons To Sign Up For Domain Privacy Protection
To protect you and your company from having your personal information fall into the wrong hands, most domain registrars offer domain privacy protection. You should take advantage of this important service for the following reasons:
Personal information protection.
Domain privacy protection helps to ensure that your company address, phone numbers, email addresses and other data are not available through the Whois system. This will make it harder for hackers to gather this information and use it in illegal ways
Scam and spam calls and emails.
Selling of personal information.
Without domain privacy protection, you are in danger of having someone gather all of your companys private information and sell it to a third party vendor. These vendors provide your information to marketers and organizations that will send you a steady stream of unwanted emails and phone calls.
Potential for competitive insights.
Your domain name registration can be used by your competitors to help them gain insight into your business and the way you operate. Your personal information can be used against you by brands looking to counter your unique advantages and capture your market share.
Unwanted internet traffic.
While some companies like any type of website visitors, letting others gain access to your companys private data can attract stalkers and hackers. These individuals have no business on your website and are only there for malicious purposes.
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Domain Privacy Protection Is Worth It
Even if youre on a tight budget, theres a good chance you can afford the cost of domain privacy protection. For what it can save you in time fielding spam calls and emails, the cost is already worth it. But add to that the risks it protects you from, and the cost of domain privacy looks a lot more reasonable.
HostGator customers can easily add domain privacy protection when registering a new domain, or to a domain they already own within just a couple of minutes. Its quick, its affordable, and it offers real benefits.