Did you know that when you register a domain, all your personal information including your name, address, email address and phone number are immediately made available to anyone who wants to see them? That’s right. Your personal information is exposed to anyone, everyday, and anywhere.
Although your domain’s whois record cannot be hidden or deleted, you can protect it through some privacy services. What you can do is register your domain in the name of these proxy services so that their information will be made public instead of your personal information. Here are two popular whois privacy services available on the web.
The screenshot below shows public whois vs. private whois. With a public registration, John Smith’s personal information is available for anyone to see. But a private registration with Domains By Proxy shields John Smith’s personal information from public display and the private email address they create allows John to control who reaches him.
For GoDaddy users, check out Private Domain Registration or Adding Private Registration to Your Domain Names to learn more about this service.
WhoisGuard
WhoisGuard places their information in public whois so that your information is not available to spammers.
Namecheap.com provides WhoisGuard free with all new domain name registrations and transfers. Protection can also be purchased for existing domains for a low price. The screenshot below shows how does Whoisguard work.
