advice Is WHOIS protection a bad idea?

[Christian Taylor]

For as long as I've owned domain names, I've always purchased WHOIS protection. I don't want my personal address out there. But then I started to get a bit curious - what am I really paying for? Is WHOIS protection any better than just using a P.O. box? Then I discovered.. by using WHOIS protection, you do not own your domain - the protection agency does, and they are licensing it back to you. This obviously seems a bit sketchy to me, and wanted to reach out to the community and ask what you guys think.

1. Is WHOIS protection safe from a legal standpoint?
2. What benefits does WHOIS protection have over a P.O. box?
3. Do you personally choose to have WHOIS protection?

By the way, I am using Whoisguard as my protection of choice.

 

[poweredbyme]

Whois protection is a must for individuals who have only home address and personal phone numbers to share publicly. Namesilo offers free whois protection and their prices are low compared to others.

 

[jerryperes]

WHOIS tool provide all information about the domain owner and it’s not good to hide it. If you have a genuine business then there is no need to hide it from users, also If you are promoting your site through search engines then you shouldn’t hide your details, because search engines don’t allow this.

 

[Christian Taylor]

If you are promoting your site through search engines then you shouldn’t hide your details, because search engines don’t allow this.

By promoting, I assume you mean paying for ads to be run at the top of results?

 

[AVeryNiceWeb.COM]

Google business won't mail a verification card unless there is a business address in your submission. A telephone number is verified by SMS or One Time Pin (OTP) voice notification.

Kind regards,

 

[Christian Taylor]

Google business won't mail a verification card unless there is a business address in your submission. A telephone number is verified by SMS or One Time Pin (OTP) voice notification.

Kind regards,

This is very interesting. I will say that I don't expect or encourage businesses to use WHOIS protection. What some of you don't understand is this: I'm not a domainer, and I'm not a business owner. I'm just a tech enthusiast with a few personal domains for my personal website. Since I make YouTube videos and promote my website on them, I'd rather not random internet trolls know where I live

 

[AVeryNiceWeb.COM]

Whois guard is completely one's choice. There should be no judgment as to the reasons why one chooses to remain private.

Kind regards,

 

[Charles Sweeney]

My details have been on my domains since 1999. Don't get much spam or juink mail and have never had a troll knock on my door!

 

[Christian Taylor]

My details have been on my domains since 1999. Don't get much spam or juink mail and have never had a troll knock on my door!

Dang, that's impressive! I've already got more spam from a domain I registered a few days ago. I used anonymize.com to cheap out on WHOIS protection - that wasn't the best idea.

 

[Smither]

As with everything else, I think a lot of it depends on who you go with. If I was personally providing this service, others would use my address, email address, etc. as the contact info. Since I'm the contact into, I could transfer the domain to myself - who's going to stop me, no one knows anyone else, right? With all the stories of the GoDaddy taking domains from customers, it doesn't look like they need to use the privacy services to steal them from you.

I've seen some SEO fights around page rank issues, including the "55 tips" that's on the homepage of Sitepoint right now. The Original Poster links to a tip that says that privacy will hurt your rank, and there are already some folks up there disagreeing. I personally have no idea, but I can tell you that I have PR3 and PR4 pages with privacy enabled. Would they be higher without privacy? Personally, I doubt it.

 

[ChelseaDott]

I don't think it will be good if you want to sell your domain names and potential buyers want to contact you or if you have a shitty domain name and domain name broker want to contact you.

 

[Robert91]

Unless you don't want domain name broker to contact you, it's good for protection.

 

[enlytend]

Google business won't mail a verification card unless there is a business address in your submission. A telephone number is verified by SMS or One Time Pin (OTP) voice notification.

??? Google Business has nothing to do with whois protection on domains - you don't even need a web site to sign up. They do need your address so they can send the verification postcard, but you can hide your address on your listing (and if your customers don't come to your place of business, you have to.) They don't do phone verification.

 

[TampaDomains]

It cost way too much for hundreds of domains and I like having them on godaddy so its not free. Even if it was free, its not a good idea for a domainer. I have people check mine out while I am on the phone with them just before finalizing the deal. So if private that might not be too good.

Also you want to make every option open for someone to find you for purchase. Sure you get spammed but no big deal. Just mark them spam and put a google voice number that goes to email only, so you can see if anyone important calls or leaves a message.

 

[todaygold]

It cost way too much for hundreds of domains and I like having them on godaddy so its not free.

Umm...or don't use GoDaddy and it's free. Why would you want to use a provider who upsells everything (charging $8.99 or whatever it is now for privacy PER domain when others give it for free!).

 

[TampaDomains]

As I explained I don't want it anyway and my domains are $8.47

The end users I sell to 95% of the time have a godaddy account because that is who spends millions advertising. So for easy pushes that is where I want to be.

 

[todaygold]

The end users I sell to 95% of the time have a godaddy account because that is who spends millions advertising. So for easy pushes that is where I want to be.

Yeah, that's the one downside is that every novice has only a GoDaddy account. That's really the only good thing. But since every major registrar offers free accounts, I don't think it's that big of a deal these days.

 

[namezest]

I would say emphatically NO because you will get calls like the 3 I had today all showing Godaddy on caller id, claiming they were Godaddy yet none of them was in fact Godaddy. Just scammers trying to get account info so obviously I have some good domains but even newbies that register anything and everything eventually or in their portfolio have some pretty decent names so be careful right now and ignore phone calls from Godaddy. Maybe they need to be made aware of the latest scam. Sorry about bad grammar.

 

[TampaDomains]

Godaddy doesn't call anyone afaik, except when long hold on phone and you request a call back.

A few weeks ago I got a call from my cable company and were talking about the security suite I have with them and telling I need to update to such and such its Free.

Sounded a bit fishy and I asked how do I know its really the cable co and they gave me a pin code from my bill so I did the update and it was legit. Most companies don't make out calls tho.

 

[Christian Taylor]

As I explained I don't want it anyway and my domains are $8.47

The end users I sell to 95% of the time have a godaddy account because that is who spends millions advertising. So for easy pushes that is where I want to be.

How do you get them that cheap?

 

[todaygold]

How do you get them that cheap?

By joining the GoDaddy Discount Club.

 

[Christian Taylor]

By joining the GoDaddy Discount Club.

Woah.. At $120 per year, and $6.70 per domain of savings, you need 18 domains to just break even. I guess if you have a big portfolio it pays off. Yet again, Namesilo is pennies more per year for free protection.

 

[TampaDomains]

1st of all you use the standard 35% off coupon that you can always find a current one with google.
I think I paid like $70 or so. It paid for itself the 1st month and I buy a lot every month.

 

[Justin Matmor]

As I now own over 200 domains, I am slowly moving all these under privacy. The main reason is because if someone googles my name it clearly shows all my domains I own and a few friends are starting to question why I am hoarding domains.

I like to keep my business private.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Regarding Indian spam...
You may try myprivacy.ca for your WHOIS email...
It requires an additional confirmation from the sender...