Protect Your Domain Name Privacy

Not everybody realises that when you purchase a domain name – be it a .com or a .co.uk or something more exotic. you are signing to the rules and regulations of the issuing authority, and this may include forcing your name and address details to be visible in the public records.

The Internet’s “founding fathers” believed that transparency and openness was important, so they set rules to ensure you could find out who owns any domain name.

That’s great if you are, for example, a consumer wishing to find out about a business that you’re considering spending money with. But it’s not so good if you are private individual who does not trade online, and just wants a domain for running a family email address system, or a private blog.

But you can protect your privacy. Here’s how.

.uk names

If your domain is .uk (including .org.uk, .co.uk, .uk etc) then if you set your legal registrant type to “Individual” you can tick a box to opt out of the Nominet WHOIS records. This will suppress your address. You cannot hide your name.

.com, .net, .org, .tv etc

For these names the situation is a little more complex because the rules state that you must display a contact name and address. However you can buy in a service which anonymises these details. We call this ID Protect. It works by replacing your contact details on the domain with the ID Protect’s details. If anybody wants to contact you via your domain name details – either by posting or faxing you something, or by emailing you, they will have to contact ID Protect who will then in turn forward that contact to you. The service filters obvious spam and junk contacts, both postal and digital.

If you’d like to apply ID Protect to your domain name contact us here.