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!

Register4Less.com has been providing free Whois Privacy service to our customers since the we first introduced this service back in 2002.  We were one of the first domain name registration providers to introduce Whois Privacy.  We are one of the few domain name registrars who still provide this essential service at no additional cost to our customers.

MikeandtheSuspects.com (full disclosure, I am the drummer for the band), for example, is a domain name registered with us and is using our free Whois Privacy service.  If you look up the record for the registrant of the domain, you will see:

Registrant Name: Register4Less Privacy Advocate
Registrant Organization: 3501256 Canada, Inc.
Registrant Street: 5802 Bob Bullock C1 Unit 328C-195   
Registrant City: Laredo
Registrant State/Province: Texas
Registrant Postal Code: 78041-8813
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.5143941150
Registrant Email: admin@privacyadvocate.org

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Every registered domain name has a Whois record which will contain contact for the registrant (owner), administrator, billing and technical contact.  For each of these contact positions (they can be the same), the Whois record will contain:

• individual’s first and last name
• organization’s name
• postal address
• phone number and optional fax number
• email address

Additionally, the Whois record will contact contact information for the domain’s registrar, and the domain’s creation date, expiry date, name server names and IP addresses, the domain’s status and the date the record was last updated.

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