The Register4Less.com Blog

Would you post your full address, email & phone number on your facebook wall?  Of course not.  So why would anyone want that information readily available in your domain’s Whois record?

When a domain name is registered, we are required by ICANN’s policy to collect personal/company contact information for the domain. This consists of the owner’s first & last name, company name (if applicable), postal address, email address, phone number and optional fax number. Without Whois privacy, this information would immediately be published in the domain’s Whois record.  The Whois database is an important part of the structure of how domains are registered, but more often than not, they are scanned using computer programs to put together a database of email addresses to be used by marketers, to send spammers, scammers, even identity thieves.

Without Whois privacy, a domain’s Whois record will look like (of course, not actual contact information):

ExampleDomain.com
John Doe, Doe’s Widget Company Inc.
123 Maplewood Drive, Los Angeles, CA, USA
+1.3105551234

With Whois privacy enabled, this same domain would appear:

ExampleDomain.com
Register4Less Privacy Advocate, 3501256 Canada Inc.
5802 Bob Bullock C1 Unit 328C-195, Laredo, TX, USA
+1.5143941150

Why not just have fake contact info?

Some will ask, why not just provide fake information with the domain registration?  There are a number of reasons why that’s not a good idea.

1. Legally, all domain name owners are bound by the registration agreement between you and your domain’s registrar.  ICANN mandates that this registration agreement must include the clause that you will maintain accurate and up to date contact information for your domain.  Under the registration agreement, if you do not keep your information complete and updated, your domain is subject to suspension.
2. With the update 2013 Registrar Registry Agreement, ICANN is now requiring registrars to confirm the email address of the domain owner.  When a domain is registered or a domain is updated with an email address that’s not already confirmed, we send an email out to that address for confirmation.  If the email bounces or is not replied to, we are required to suspend the domain.
3. The contact information you maintain on account with us is what we use to send you reminders for your domain registration or hosting renewal.  If the address is not working, you’ll miss the reminders and may forget to renew your domain.  That can cause downtime, and the potential for a redemption renewal (much more costly due to higher fees from the registry, or worse, loss of the domain.  If that happens and a domain speculator picks it up, you’re at their mercy to buy the domain back.

Protect Your Identity

Identity theft is a crime that is on the rise.  The best way to not have your personal contact information taken is not to make publicly available.  When you register a new domain, choose to have Whois privacy enabled when you submit your order.

Avoid Unwanted Solicitations

Spammers regularly query the Whois servers of domain registrars in order to build a database of working email addresses.  If your domain is not private, you can expect to receive emails with offers to buy your domain, to congratulate you that you’ve been awarded a $15 Million, life and health insurance offers, etc.  You should also ensure never to put your email address in plain text in a website.

Upgrade Now for Free

Register4Less was one of the first registration providers to introduce Whois privacy back in 2002.  At that time, a number of registrars were sending mail to domain owners with what looked confusingly like an invoice for the renewal of their domains (at rates 3 times higher than our fees).  A number of domain owners were tricked by these solicitations, and sent off their payment to these companies.  While we helped customers cancel these transfers and get their money back, we knew we needed to come up with something to help prevent this abuse.

The Whois privacy service we developed has always been provided free of charge to our customers.  We fully intend to keep this service free of charge for our customers.  It’s part of what makes us the non-evil domain registration and web hosting company!

Last week, we sent out an email asking you to vote on the option of R4L adding automated telephone notifications in the event one or more of your domain names is about to be suspended. A total of 755 votes were cast. The team at R4L would like to express our gratitude to all of you that took the time to express your preference. The result of the votes are as follows:

 Loading ...

Clearly, the overall preference is to add this service, and our team are now working on getting this live. We have already updated the messaging preferences page to have allow you to opt out of telephone notifications for either domains that are to be suspeded due to expiry or contact not being confirmed. The default for both of these is enabled, so if you do not wish phone notifications, please log in and update your preferences (Profile > Messaging Preferences).

The poll is now open.  Please click here to cast your vote.

ICANN requires all accredited registrars to verify new contact information for domain owners.  If you would like to read ICANN’s policy regarding Whois accuracy, please click this link.

Currently Register4Less.com manages this process by an email that we send to the new contact email address.  This email contains a link for the domain owner to click to verify their address.  In the event that the email sent to the domain registrant bounces or if the link in the email that we send is not clicked, we are required to place a clientHold on the domain name.  This will prevent the domain from resolving, so any web hosting or email service will stop working.

It does happen that people will sometimes ignore the request to verify, or their spam filter will mistakenly block the email (please, whitelist in your spam filter email coming from any address @register4less.com).  In cases like these, the verification doesn’t happen, and the domain in question will be suspended.

Register4Less.com as you hopefully know tries to provide the best possible customer support, and tried to do this in the most streamlined, efficient manner possible.  Our support team have dealt with some customers who have understandably been upset by their domains being suspended due to this process.

Our team have been discussing options to improve notification.  Having our support staff call is not an efficient way to handle this, so the solution we are proposing would be to have an automated notification call to the phone number on file for the domain owner.  There of course would be an option to opt-out of this type of notification.

Cast Your Vote Now

We have added a poll on our blog site for you to be able to cast your vote.  As always, if you’re an R4L customer reading this, thank-you for your continued business!