Domain privacy protection obscures your contact and personal information associated with your website, hiding it from public eye – especially spammers – and instead providing the contact information from your host or registrar. Since the CAN-SPAM act in 2003, you are required to provide accurate contact information anytime you register a site. The following hosts have domain privacy protection available when you register domains through them. You can also view them by hosts with free domain privacy protection.
Table of Contents
Note: WHdb.com is funded with the help of our visitors. We receive a small commission fee when a user signs up for hosting at no additional cost to our visitors. All information on this website, including prices, is intended to be informational only.
Is Domain Privacy Protection Right For You?
When you register a domain, you must provide personal information, including:
- Your Full name
- Your address
- Your phone number
- Your email
This information is available to everyone who does a WHOIS
lookup on your site. Everyone. Small
business owners, especially people working where they live, can greatly benefit
from domain privacy protection. While you’ll still need to provide your
information to the web host or registrar, their information will become public
instead of yours.
For small business owners, domain privacy can prevent spammers from contacting you and flooding your inbox with junk mail. Larger businesses have ways to field these sorts of emails with filters, but smaller business can end up with important emails being mixed with trash. For people who work from home, the reasons for keeping your details hidden from public view are numerous.
Using A PO Box Address Instead Of Privacy Protection
For people working from their homes, using a PO box instead
of your physical address will meet CAN-SPAM requirements while hiding your
address from WHOIS lookups. That said, there are two points that makes this approach
less than ideal:
- Chances are – especially if you’re a homeowner –
that spammers already have access to your home address. Using a PO box will not
remove that information from public knowledge. - This still leaves your email information available.
It is possible to use an alternate email, but online directory may begin to
associate this email with your business.
