If you’re new to domain registration, you may have heard of ‘domain privacy’, or wondered ‘what is a private domain?’ Well, both private domains/domain privacy has to do with the domain registration process. More specifically, keeping your personal information safe and secure. When registering a domain, one of the required components is providing your contact information. This includes your name, email address, phone number, and even your mailing address. You might wonder where this personal information ends up. To answer that question, all personal information associated with your registered domain name is collected by ICANN (the organization which regulates and manages domain databases), which is then publicly displayed in a directory known as the WHOIS database. This can be a huge concern to many domain owners who don’t want any of their contact information visible to the public.
So, how can domain name owners hide their personal contact information? It’s simple, consider registering a private domain! In this blog post, I will go over private domains in more depth. Specifically, what is a private domain and what are the benefits of private domain registration.
What Is A Private Domain?
The public WHOIS database makes it possible and convenient for anyone to lookup domain owners contact information. Unfortunately, this has become a tool for spammers and scammers to create their contact lists, especially for domains with public information displayed. So, considering registering for a private domain is indeed a smart choice. If you’re asking yourself “what is a private domain?”, it is a premium feature that protects domain registrants’ personal information from being open to the public from within the WHOIS public database. The main purpose of domain privacy is to prevent registrants from unnecessary scammers, marketers, and any future inconveniences that public domains may encounter.
The Benefits Of Private Domain Registration
Here are four great benefits that come with private domain registration.
1) Hides your personal information: Keeping your contact information safe and secure.
2) Gets rid of predatory activities: Prevents abuse and scam attempts through unwanted outreach.
3) Blocks out spam: Hidden contact information prevents your details from being added to lists without your permission.
4) Stop troublesome data mining: Cease spammers from creating mailing lists from collecting domains data.
Should You Pay For Domain Privacy?
At this day in age, you shouldn’t be paying for a private domain. Domain privacy is a service that is available for free at numerous different registrars. The two I would recommend are DynaDot and NameSilo. Depending on the registrar, some do charge an additional fee for domain privacy (such as GoDaddy) and it can cost as much as $10 per year. If domain privacy is important to you or you want to make several domains private, I would recommend using one of the registrars I just listed since they do not charge for this feature.
How Do I Know If My Domain Is Private?
If you’re unsure about whether your domain is private or not, you can look up your domain with the DynaDot WHOIS lookup tool. Simply search for your domain name and if your contact information is replaced with the information provided by your registrar, you have domain privacy activated. If you would like to learn more about domain privacy then please read my post titled Why Use WhoIs Privacy!
