Why Private protection is important for domain?
Why Private protection is important for domain?
Private protection, often referred to as domain privacy or WHOIS privacy, is important for domain owners for several reasons:
- Privacy Protection: When you register a domain, your contact information (including name, address, phone number, and email address) is typically made publicly available in the WHOIS database. Private protection hides this personal information from public view, reducing the risk of spam, phishing attempts, identity theft, and unsolicited communication.
- Prevention of Spam: Without private protection, domain owners are vulnerable to receiving unsolicited emails, phone calls, and physical mail from marketers, spammers, and scammers who scrape WHOIS data for contact information. Private protection helps mitigate spam and unwanted communication by keeping your contact details private.
- Protection Against Identity Theft: Publicly available WHOIS data can be exploited by cybercriminals for identity theft and fraud. Private protection shields domain owners’ personal information, reducing the risk of identity theft and unauthorized access to sensitive data.
- Maintaining Anonymity: Private protection allows individuals and businesses to maintain anonymity and protect their privacy online. This is especially important for individuals who wish to keep their personal information private or businesses that want to shield their contact details from competitors and potential threats.
- Security and Safety: By concealing personal information in the WHOIS database, private protection helps enhance overall security and safety for domain owners. It reduces the likelihood of targeted attacks, harassment, and other malicious activities that may result from exposing contact details publicly.
- Compliance with Regulations: In some jurisdictions, privacy regulations require domain registrars to provide options for private protection to comply with data protection laws. By offering private protection services, registrars ensure that domain owners have the ability to safeguard their personal information in accordance with legal requirements.
What is Full Domain Privacy and Protection?
Private domain registration is an ‘add-on’ service you buy to protect your data and keep it hidden from the rest of the world. If your website’s information is available for anyone to see on the internet, then it’s obvious that your business can be in harm’s way if that information falls into the wrong hands.
To rid your digital platform of such risks, privacy protection is necessary. It can also serve as good protection for the entire IoT platform, helping to keep all the data safe since the protection of the entire network of users is also an important and integral part of the platform.
Can Everyone See My Information?
If your website domain is not privacy protected, everyone can see your information. When you register your domain on the world wide web, it becomes a part of the global directory, called WHOIS, that makes your domain’s all registered information available to the public.
If you had integrated privacy protection when creating the website domain, your information would not be visible to everyone. However, if privacy is not protected, then your information is just a couple of clicks away from the rest of the world.
What’s in the WHOIS Directory?
The public WHOIS database is a public directory that maintains a record of all domain registrations online. This includes domain registrant details, verifications, expiry, renewal dates, and more.
It’s very similar to how an asset you own is registered under a governing authority or register. Think about your car or your house; you would’ve registered it under a governing authority that records ownership, its start date, and duration.
However, what would happen if this information became available to the rest of the world? For an average user, this can create a big problem.
The main benefits of privacy protection are providing you privacy and protecting your data. But you do get many benefits from purchasing the service, such as a lock icon on web links, complete encryption on the transfer of information, rid of spam calls and emails, and much more.
If you do not have privacy protection on your domain, the ownership of any domain on the internet can be traced using the WHOIS lookup feature.
What is a WHOIS Lookup?
As explained above, WHOIS is a public directory that holds all the records and personal information of all registered domains. Since it is a public directory, it can be seen and viewed by everyone in the world.
The WHOIS Lookup is a feature in the WHOIS directory that, if you type the website’s name on, will reveal who owns and manages the domain name, including their names, contact information, address, etc., that they initially provided while registering for the domain.
Although the WHOIS lookup feature is an easy way to find relevant information on the Public WHOIS database, it can sometimes be used against you or harm you if your personal information is just a “lookup away” from literally everyone in the world.
For example, we search the domain registrant details for ‘nike.com’ in the following screenshot.
Below, we can see who the domain registrar is, when the registration expires, and when it was last updated.
Scrolling further down, we can see the registrant’s name, which city they’re located in, and even access their phone number and email address.
Now, it’s not a big deal for a large company like Nike to make this information available publicly. However, if you’re a small business owner, you need to be careful with the accessible information about your business, where it’s available, and why. And that is exactly why you need to hide domain information of your website from the public’s eye.
If you want to ensure that this information doesn’t become publicly available, you need to register for private domain registration.
How Does Protection Privacy Work?
When you register a domain name, your personal details are saved in WHOIS. If you opt not to buy domain privacy protection, you’re choosing to expose your personal information on the WHOIS directory, so anyone can see your contact details (assuming you’re the domain registrant).
Upon purchasing the privacy protection service, you get multiple advantages, such as complete security over the web, privacy in the WHOIS directory, and more.
How Much Does Domain Privacy Protection Protect Site Owners?
An unprotected and public domain leaves all of the domain’s information, including the registrar’s personal and sensitive information, available to the public. Many people might not care that their deeply personal information is open to the public, but that is because they haven’t yet experienced its risks.
First of all, loose-on-the-internet information can lead anyone to send you spam and inappropriate messages and emails, which no one would appreciate. Secondly, your house address is visible to everyone, which means anyone can practically walk outside your door and contact you there. Third, your domain’s expiration and renewal date are also available for public view on an unprotected site, which your competitors and new entrants could use to steal your domain.
Overall, private protection is an essential service for domain owners who value privacy, security, and peace of mind. It helps mitigate risks associated with exposing personal information publicly and enhances online safety in an increasingly interconnected digital landscape.