Domain Registration: Why You Need a Private Whois Service
Privacy is control over your personal information, control over what others know about you, and control over how others can use or exploit your personal information. Policies and practices to protect privacy are intended to minimize the collection of personally identifiable information. Making the disclosure of personally identifiable information mandatory, under current WhoIs policies for domain registration, undermines privacy.
For freedom of expression, privacy is essential. For example, if people are forced to reveal their identity, they are reluctant to fully express their ideas for fear of persecution.
Anonymity protection further enhances the one-to-many characteristics of the Internet through which an individual's speech can reach a global audience.
Privacy and data protection laws may apply to domain registrars 'WhoIs services and registrars' participation in bulk registry WhoIs services in various countries, particularly in the member states of the European Union.
Current ICANN regulations require that private contact information (WhoIs Info) for each domain registration be included in a publicly accessible database.
The WhoIs database is the collection of information collected by a domain name registrar from domain name registrants.
The purpose for which the WhoIs system is accessed includes:
- To find out if a specific domain name is not registered and is currently available
- Identify the person or organization responsible for registering a domain or website on the Internet.
- To support the technical operations of Internet service providers or network administrators, including assistance in tracking down sources of spam or denial of service attacks.
- To collect names and contact information for marketing purposes.
- To assist law enforcement, other than intellectual property
When performing a WhoIs search, the information that is currently available about the domain name registrant leads to the name and address of the domain name owner.
However, when a domain name is registered, personal contact information such as name, address, email address, and even phone number may be freely available.
The domain registrant would not know who collected their WhoIs data, why the information was collected, and how the collector is likely to use the information.
This implies that private information is displayed and made available to whoever wants to see it, at any time.
It is now possible to protect private Whois information by changing the "public" domain record to a "private" unlisted record through a private whois service.
A private whois service protects private information and protects it against misuse. Therefore, one is protected against:
- - Unwanted mail,
- - Identity theft,
- - Data processing,
- - Name hijackers,
- - Etc.
It works similar to having the "unlisted" phone number and prevents people from accessing the address, phone number, and other private information.
A private whois service works by:
- - Protection of private information
- - Convey important communication
- - Providing greater control
Protection of private information
This implies that private contact information is not exposed and is kept confidential and protected by the Domain Privacy Protection Service. Instead of the person's contact information, their contact information is displayed to provide the highest level of protection against spammers and identity theft.
Convey important communication
Without a private whois service, people involved in spamming can obtain email addresses by harvesting and then use them to send spam emails and redistribute them to marketing companies. Email addresses can remain registered with various spammers and marketing companies for several years. With a private whois service, the visible email address is constantly changing, so it will change within a specified period of time and the old address will not work for the spammer. The Domain Privacy Protection Service secures and maintains the real registered email address so that important information can be received.
Provide greater control
The person or organization that subscribes to the private whois service retains legal ownership and full control over the domain registration. It is possible to sell, renew, transfer, and change domain name settings in the same way as otherwise.