Why Is The Directory Required
The WHOIS directory exists to make sure theres a clear record of who owns each website on the web. Thats important for cases where a website owner veers into illegal or abusive territory. Without a record of how to find offenders, authorities would have no way to hold them accountable and minimize harm.
It is beneficial in the following scenarios.
- Tracking and locating a scammer or a hacker.
- Businesses or lawyers seek to identify people guilty of stealing or misusing intellectual property,
- Such as plagiarists or people who use images they dont have the rights for.
- Internet companies want to limit the power of people guilty of spam or other nuisances or malicious behavior online.
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 Domain Privacy & Protection
Domain Privacy & Protection keeps personal info hidden from public view, which helps secure private data from identity theft, domain-related spam and domain name hijacking. Instead of displaying your personal information in the WHOIS database for all to see, our partner, Domains By Proxy®, will replace it with its own. The domain will belong to you except now, you and Domains By Proxy® will be the only ones who know it.
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How To Get Domain Name Privacy With Hostgator
If youre ready to add one more level of privacy to your life and website, then investing in domain privacy is pretty simple. Check with your web hosting company to see if they offer it as an add-on service.
If you use HostGator, all you have to do is use launchpad to enable WHOIS privacy. Follow the instructions below:
- Log into your Customer Portal.
- Look for the word Privacy. Youll see a red X next to it, indicating you havent bought it yet. Click on the word Change next to the X.
Youll probably still get the occasional spam phone calls or emailswe all dobut by investing in domain name privacy, you wont get as many and youll keep you private information safe from strangers.
For more information on how to manage domains or transfer domain names, please contact HostGator today.
Your Personal Informaton Is Not Public Anymore
Whether anyone does something bad with your personal information or not, it is not really desirable to post your personal information in the public domain.
You may wonder how hackers can exploit you by knowing your domain personal information. Hackers can easily hack your email addresses, can easily hack your phones, and through this they can easily control your domain.
They can even access your website, delete posts, dump viruses in your website directory, and so on. If your domain information is not public, you are blocking that door for hackers.
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What Does It Mean When A Domain Is Privacy Protected
Answer:
What does it mean when a domain is privacy protected?
When a domain is privacy protected, it means that the domain owner opted to use a privacy service offered through their current registrar. All privacy services are a third-party service that replaces domain owners personal information with their third-party information in Whois records. Domain owners may opt to use privacy protection so that they can remain anonymous.When a domain is privacy protected, you have no way to contact the domain owner directly. You may contact the privacy service provider at the email provided in the Whois record for information pertaining to further contacting the domain owner. You may also visit the privacy service providers website in order to contact the registrant.
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Privacy Overview
Loss Of Your Domain Name
If your personal information is publicly available, then someone can squat on your domain name.
This means that they can claim the domain name as their own and you could lose it.
Domain privacy is a valuable service that can help to protect you from these risks.
It can also help you to keep your domain name longer and reduce the likelihood of domain name hijacking.
Domain privacy typically costs around $10 per year.
This is a small price to pay for the peace of mind that comes with knowing your personal information is safe and secure.
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Reduce The Number Of Spam Emails
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Over the years, weve got so used to receiving spam emails that its become easy to ignore them once they find their way into our inboxes. Still, with your email address at everyones disposal, youll probably be facing an influx of spam emails that may not get caught by all your spam filters.
Email is generally the easiest way to reach someone nowadays, and companies who want to promote or sell something know that. With your contact information publicly available, they will be quick to use it to their advantage and spam you with their offers. With domain protection in place, your public contact email will remain hidden, and you can control if you want the e-mails delivered to your inbox.
You Could Fall Victim To Identity Theft
When your private information is available publicly, just about anyone can access it, which includes identity thieves. This is a huge risk, especially for business owners, as someone could smear your name in crime related dealings because they have your information.
And if youre in the middle of developing a new concept, or building your business website, youd like to still keep it in stealth mode, or else, people will get to know who is behind the project. By purchasing privacy protection, not only your personal data, but your identity can be protected and no one can get hold of your personal information to hack or steal your identity.
Whats more, if your website is hacked, you risk losing the trust youve built with your customers overtime in a single occurrence. A problem such as that is better avoided than allow it to destroy your small business.
If youre not already using privacy protection for your domain and you are getting heavily spammed simply purchase it and your email and phone spam will be reduced once you have privacy protection enabled on your domain.
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Protect Competitors From Finding Your Info
When your entire information will be saved with domain privacy protection services, you will be able to protect the competitors from using your information. Your personal and business information cannot be leaked out when you use domain privacy protection services. The competitors can steal your business information and can use it in their business strategies. You cannot tolerate if your competitors are using the same strategies as you are so you need to prevent your information. So, if you do not want your competitors to look in for your business and personal information, then you need to use domain privacy protection services for sure.
It May Not Offer Full Protection
Unfortunately, not all domain registrars are reputable and there have been cases of companies selling the information that customers paid them to keep private. Shielding the information from the WHOIS directory is one thing, but if you want to keep your contact information really safe, then you still want to be careful who you buy domain name privacy from. Make sure its a well respected company with a solid reputation for taking care of their customers.
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How Does Protection Privacy Work
When you register a domain name, your personal details are saved in WHOIS. If you opt not to buy domain privacy protection, youre choosing to expose your personal information on the WHOIS directory, so anyone can see your contact details .
Upon purchasing the privacy protection service, you get multiple advantages, such as complete security over the web, privacy in the WHOIS directory, and more.
Hides Your Contact Details
Webmasters and investors who have been in the website game for a while remember when no registrars gave free privacy. If you didnt pay for it, the mass spam emails were sure to follow.
Hiding the contact details stops this, which also limits the phishing emails. This can be turned off for those selling domain names, but most other webmasters are better served by the privacy which also makes them harder to target.
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Domain Privacy Can Help To Protect Your Personal Information
First, domain privacy can help to protect your personal information.
When you register a domain, you are required to provide your contact information, contact details, and personal details.
This information is then publicly available, which means that it can be accessed by anyone who wants to find it.
If you have domain privacy, your contact information will be hidden, making it much more difficult for people to find and use it.
Your Competitor Wont Get Your Information
Your competitor may gain some advantage if they get your personal information. You are blocking the door by domain privacy protection.
Many people feel that they can domain with fake data. But that is wrong. Often domain registrars verify the data that you submit while buying a domain.
So domain privacy protection is the only way to safeguard your data from your competitors.
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Reasons Why You Need Domain Privacy Protectionshare
Nearly 1.9 billion recordscontaining personal data were compromised between January 2017 and March 2018.75% of data breaches occur due to external hackersand data attackers. More importantly, the average cost of a single data breach can be as high as$3.62 million.
If youre a website owner and still wondering, do I need domain privacy? then you have some serious implementations to make.
Given how damaging data breaches can be, you need to take domain privacy protection seriously and learn how to protect a domain name. Keep reading!
Secure Your Personal Details
Domain Privacy + Protection prevents your personal information from being exposed. ICANN, the international governing body for domain names, requires every domain registrar to maintain a publicly viewable “WHOIS” database that displays the personal contact information for every registered domain. With Domain Privacy + Protection enabled, we’ll show our information in place of yours.
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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.
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.
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Your Own Domain Registrar
If you own a website, youll often have a domain name to go with it. Choosing a domain registrar is beyond the scope of this piece, although you will want to investigate what type of domain privacy you can access.
Still, the best place to start is with your current registrar because it will be the path of least resistance for implementing domain privacy. Most registrars have a similar dashboard:
Here, youll find many tools to help you manage your domain regardless of your task. However, youll notice that theres no explicit Domain Privacy option for this particular registrar. Instead, you get Domain Ownership Protection .
Thats one example of where several services come as a bundle for which youll pay a premium price. Here, you get WHOIS domain privacy and further protections such as the ability to lock the domain. This feature helps users avoid common mistakes, such as transferring a domain, changing the domains personal information, or canceling domain renewal. Its an added layer of protection that could be worth the cost.
As for activating something like DOP or the equivalent, its often done at the time of purchase. Though, youll also have a dedicated dashboard to handle the process after the fact too:
These generic steps will apply to most domain registrars. However, other registrars do things differently or more straightforwardly. Lets look at a couple of the major players.
What Does Domain Protection Do
Domain protection is there to protect the owner of a domain name. This uses a proxy registrar address so your personal address, email address, and other contact info is not public.
Domain protection does three very important things:
These work in combination to help not only protect the privacy of the domain owner but also to protect the domain owner from common phishing or spamming techniques.
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Why Is Protecting My Godaddy Domain Important
Eligible domains registered with GoDaddy have all domain contact info automatically substituted with proxy details from our privacy service provider, Domains By Proxy®. Protecting your domain is about more than keeping your contact info private. Domain Protection also includes options for preventing unauthorized domain actions, such as transferring a domain or making DNS updates. And our Ultimate Domain Protection plan includes billing protection, so you don’t lose your domain if your card unexpectedly expires.
The Benefits Of Whois Protection
If youre considering whether private domain registration is worth it, lets go over the reasons why you benefit.
1. Protect your personal information
Identity theft is a serious problem online, and personal information is needed when registering a domain name. If someone were to gain access to this data, it could cause serious problems for you or your business. Whois protection conceals this information. Domain privacy is necessary to help prevent your data from getting into the wrong hands.
2. Prevent unsolicited marketing outreach
Listing your contact information alongside your domain invites unwanted attention from salespeople, spammers, telemarketers, and fraudsters. Some individuals scan the Whois database for contact information, trawling newly registered websites in particular. Soon after registration you may be targeted with emails and calls about trying to offer online marketing, SEO, making domain privacy protection worth getting just to avoid such communications!
3. Minimize spam
Private registration for a domain name is necessary if you want to protect your email, and cut down on unsolicited emails from spammers. Your domain registrar will include an alias email in place of your own within the Whois database cutting down the likelihood of phishing emails. Such phishing emails wont reach your true email if you use domain privacy protection.
4. Greater control over your personal information
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Where To Get Free Domain Privacy Protection
Now that you fully understand what is domain privacy protection, hopefully you DO see the need and true benefit of having it. Frankly, I personally would not build a website or blog today without having this protection added first. And you shouldnt either.
Recently, I discovered a few places online that have not only super reliable web hosting, but also will give you this feature for FREE! Yes, I said it. You can save this money and buy yourself a nice Chick-filet combo.
NOTE: I personally like the #3 Spicy Chicken Deluxe combo just in case you want to know. Its my favorite, but dont tell anybody:) and You?
As I mentioned before, when I first got started online, I went to Godaddy for everything. But later I said bye bye daddy and went on a search to find some cheaper solutions. If you are a beginner online you are probably looking for ways to save money in your business too, right?
Thats why I got married with Namecheap being I realized how much cheaper their domain names were in comparison to Godaddy. Making the transition over to Namecheap was easy and saved me an average of $10 on each domain. Godaddy domains run about $17.99 now whereas Namecheap domains are $8.88. Whatever domain you purchase at Namecheap you will get FREE domain privacy protection .
Enabling Or Disabling Privacy Protection For Contact Information For A Domain
When you register a domain with Amazon Route 53 or transfer a domain to Route 53, we enable privacy protection by default for all the contacts for the domain. This typically hides most of your contact information from WHOIS queries and reduces the amount of spam that you receive. Your contact information is replaced either with contact information for the registrar or with the phrase “REDACTED FOR PRIVACY.”
If you choose to disable privacy protection, you must disable it for all contacts for a domain. If you do disable privacy protection, anyone can send a WHOIS query for the domain and, for most top-level domains , might be able to get all the contact information that you provided when you registered or transferred the domain, including name, address, phone number, and email address. The WHOIS command is widely available it’s included in many operating systems, and it’s also available as a web application on many websites.
The information that you can hide from WHOIS queries depends on two main factors:
- The registry for the top level domain
-
Most TLD registries hide all contact information automatically, some allow you to choose to hide all contact information, some allow you to hide only some information, and some do not allow you to hide any information.
Note
To enable or disable privacy protection for some domains, you must open a support case and request privacy protection. For more information, see the applicable section in :
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