We try to save our money whenever we can. It makes good sense to avoid unnecessary waste of money. But if it is your habit of saying ‘No’ before knowing about the details of an offer, there is a good chance that you will miss out on features that can do more good than harm.
A good example of this is ‘WHOIS’ protection or Domain Name Privacy. There are tons of advantages and a few cons of domain name privacy that we will learn today. If you are planning to go for domain privacy protection, you must continue reading this post.
What is Domain Privacy?
Most of the people are not aware that their contact details that they give during the registration of domain names are publicly available, all credit goes to the WHOIS listing.
WHOIS protection or Domain Privacy is the service that keeps the personal information a domain registrant hidden from public eye. For those who don’t know, WHOIS is an organization that is responsible to manage all the data associated to a domain registrant.
All registrant details that include name, address, contact details, renewal, and expiry dates are considered public information. If someone knows your registered domain name, they can search it in WHOIS search tool and see all this information.
But when you choose privacy protection, it hides your personal name, business name, address phone detail, and email address in WHOIS list.
There are many ICANN accredited domain name registrars available that offer domain privacy protection. This provider offers exclusive domain privacy protection service that will hide your confidential information from the public eye.
Benefits of Private Domain Registration
When you buy a domain name, your domain registrar is needed by ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to add the contact details of the website owner. It means if you don’t go for the private domain registration, your details will show publically.
Domain privacy keeps your personal details hidden from strangers. This is one of the common reasons people choose privacy protection. Today, almost everyone has access to the internet that means anyone can have access to your address, phone number, mailing address, email address.
If your website includes a subject that may cause dispute or argument, it is safe to choose domain privacy so that your personal information can be safe from the access of undesired strangers.
Here are a few major reasons you need private domain registration.
It Keeps Your Personal Information Safe
Identity theft is the biggest concern today. It is getting more sophisticated day by day. Every day, we hear news on credit card information is being stolen. According to the report of CWMoney, every 2 seconds there is a new victim of identity theft.
Therefore, it is not a bad idea to go some extra miles to protect your privacy, especially when it comes to banking, phone numbers, and other personal information.
As your personal details that you had to give when registering your domain can be used by hackers, you shouldn’t hesitate to choose domain privacy protection.
There is adequate data contained in a WHOIS domain record that a skilled thief can use to bypass some types of security. So don’t let hackers dig deeper into your personal data.
Avoid Unwanted Solicitations
Probably, you are not thinking that way, your personal information can be used by salespeople, spammers, con artists and telemarkets.
Once you have listed your personal contact information for your domain, it will not take long to start receiving a flood of calls and emails regarding social media marketing, SEO services, content optimization, mailing services from people across the globe.
What is worse, many scammers take this information and contact you at the time your domain is about to expire. These scammers don’t do anything to renew your domain but can transfer it without your consent and charge you hundreds of dollars to give it back to you.
Prevent Domain Hijacking
Earlier, it was much easier for hackers to hijack a domain. Since domain name registrars have started offering ‘domain transfer look’ feature, there is a big decrease in domain hijacking. This lockset protects your domain from being transferred.
Hackers will need to get access to your registrar account and email to transfer your domain name. When you opt domain privacy protection, you add one more hurdle to hackers to jump into your domain registrar account. It will make extremely difficult for them to harvest the data and get access to your account.
Email Protection
When you choose a private domain registration, your domain registrar creates an alias email address that is used in place of your genuine email address in the WHOIS database. It helps in keeping spammers away. The good thing is that alias email address is not always the same, it keeps changing.
Disadvantages of Private Domain Registration
Choosing domain privacy protection seems a common sense when setting up a new website. After all, it keeps your personal information protected from hackers, telemarketers and suspected people. Still, there are some downsides of private domain registration that you should know. These are:
-With most domain registrar, you will pay an additional cost for it. The bad thing is that prices can vary greatly from one registrar to another. Since these prices are not regulated by any legal agency, registrar keeps the right to charge the prices they want.
-Even if you are paying extra dollars to keep your information private, it is possible that your registrar is selling your information although it is a rare case.
-If you keep all your contact information private, a prospective user may think that you are trying to hide something.
Final Words
It is not always necessary to invest in domain privacy protection. However, the price is insignificant when you take a look at its advantages. If you want to protect your privacy, it is a worthwhile investment for you.