Imagine you’re creating a website with a new domain name.
When you register your domain name at a domain name registrar, you’re required to provide your contact information.
Which includes your name, physical address, email address, and phone number.
Did you know that information is displayed publicly when someone searches for details about your domain name?
Yikes!
That’s the kind of information marketing firms, scammers, and spammers love.
You don’t want that information to be available to the public. Your privacy matters.
Read on to learn how you can use domain privacy to protect your personal information.
Domain Privacy
Years ago, when you registered a domain name, you had no choice to protect your personal information.
It was all available from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a not-for-profit corporation that manages the domain name systems (as well as other Internet-related functions).
As you might imagine, marketers, spammers, and others were able to easily access personal information.
Which was the cause of many spam email messages and letters to domain name owners about bogus domain registration renewal.
Whether it was from customer complaints, or domain registrars acted on their own, eventually registrars began offering a domain privacy feature.
Some domain registrars call it private registration.
For an additional annual payment to your domain registrar, you can prevent your name, physical address, email address, and phone number from displaying in public.
In recent years, I’ve discovered some domain registrars like Namecheap, Hover, Google Domains, Gandi, and GoDaddy, are offering domain privacy at no extra cost.
Which is great news!
However, note the domain privacy varies.
Some registrars, like Hover, use a proxy registration. No personally identifiable information is provided.
Others, like GoDaddy, offer free basic Whois privacy, which removes your name, phone number, and email, but still displays your state (but not your street address).
If you prefer not to have any personal information made public, choose a domain registrar that doesn’t display any of your personal details.
Wrapping Up
Keeping your personal information private is crucial on the web. Using domain privacy or private registration at your domain registrar allows you to prevent your information from being made public.
Shoutout to my friend Chris Wiegman, who suggested I write a follow-up to my post why you want your web hosting and domain registration in your name.
Do you have tips or suggestions about keeping your personal info private on your domain name registration? Share your experiences in the comments.
