Whois Privacy: What's your Take

[stscac]

Howdy NPer's. Let's get down to brass tacks...

What's your take on Domain Name Whois Privacy?


Please post:
How much would you pay and for what services?

All the best.

-Steve

 

[whitebark]

I use private registration on most of my domains and it doesn't stop people from contacting me. Just be sure the protected email reaches one you can monitor.

As an aside - CIRA is bringing in whois protection for all personal .ca holders on june 10 as a free service. You can opt out if you wish as well. They are following the Canadian privacy act which was amended not long ago. I think this is a great thing. You could buy whois protection for .ca domains before but it would still reveal your registrant name.

 

[seeker]

I find the I have nothing to hide approach a bit silly.
It is called Privacy, not Hidden services.
There are reasons there are many, many Privacy laws in the vast majority of Industrialized Western nations.
As for not getting emails, this has never happened to me. You can always try to email your private email and see if you get it.
As to losing the domain, that is BS. The regfly fiasco was a general disaster, and many people lost their domains regardless of privacy. Now if you use fake whois AND Privacy, then it is your fault. Fake whois is grounds for losing a domain in the first place.
There are soooo many advantages to Private whois, including an advantage against your competition in what you do own and what you do not. Remember, knowledge is power. The less your competition knows (in any field, or sub category of the domain business, including building sites), the less powerful they are over you.

 

[HWW]

I tend to try and keep my adult names private, I often take advantage of free private registration for this reason but I have purchased it in the past for adult domains that I have sites on. This is purely due to my non internet business - I don't want potential clients knowing I have an adult industry interest or my kids school friends and neighbors for that matter.
It is for this reason that I also use a mail box for business snail mail/affiliate checks etc.
For non adult I can take it or leave it - if its free I'll take it in the hopes that it cuts down on spam but after reading these posts I intend to check out the mail situation to make sure that if anyone is sending me offers I get them!

 

[DBADT2007]

I see great minds think alike.
REP+

I find the I have nothing to hide approach a bit silly.
It is called Privacy, not Hidden services.
There are reasons there are many, many Privacy laws in the vast majority of Industrialized Western nations.
As for not getting emails, this has never happened to me. You can always try to email your private email and see if you get it.
As to losing the domain, that is BS. The regfly fiasco was a general disaster, and many people lost their domains regardless of privacy. Now if you use fake whois AND Privacy, then it is your fault. Fake whois is grounds for losing a domain in the first place.
There are soooo many advantages to Private whois, including an advantage against your competition in what you do own and what you do not. Remember, knowledge is power. The less your competition knows (in any field, or sub category of the domain business, including building sites), the less powerful they are over you.

 

[dezinerite]

I chose both free & paid. The privacy feature has been enabled for my websites and sites I plan to develop. I just don't want to deal with:

1 - Spam
2 - Identity theft
3 - People wanting mind my sites' business and check out my whois

I'm also under the assumption that having fake contact infos for your domains can get you into trouble (esp. because ICANN checks the info, don't they?) so I definitely feel that privacy feature is actually quite important.

 

[longroad]

When I used to register at Namecheap I'd use the free whois for a year, but I've never paid for it anywhere.
I'd like to use it for all my domains but can't justify the cost.

 

[MJ]

I would never use privacy. Like many of you stated "I have nothing to hide" - however this is a very dangerous statement. I dont have anything to hide in my house either, yet I'm not going to let any authority search it without a legal order to. I am a huge privacy advocate, and following the law. When you use "I have nothing to hide, search me" this is undermining the constitution (US) and other places. Letting people search you, scan at airports etc, because you have "nothing to hide" is just giving the man more power and control.

I personally have nothing to hide and you cannot search me.

Ok, but relating to domains: I voted no because everyone knows who you are, and unless a scammer, it's not that valuable. You are paying to show the world you don't own something when in fact you do own it. Hope you don't plan on selling your domains because no one will be able to find you. :o

My personal experience is only people who have domains they shouldn't have, or starting a company that rips people off, or extreamly rich people have privacy.

 

[alisha0512]

how the privacy of the system work?

 

[kngavl]

I think identity theft could be a huge issue when your laying out so much information about yourself on the internet and it's available to everyone cost free.
The thing about it that bothers me is having my home address listed publicly, if your gonna send an offer for one of my domains by snail mail I'm not interested. I see the home address feature irrelevant for domain owners and it should be kept private.

 

[alisha0512]

very nice posting

 

[popopo]

also i love free services.

 

[Element]

I would have to cast my vote for No, but would use free services.

 

[Weber]

I'm all for keeping personal info private if you choose. In fact, it should be the default setting when you register and protected by the constitution. If it's not, it's subject to abuse, aka domain registration requirements and others. It does'nt make sense for example, that there are US laws that forbid certain sharing of personal informatiom, yet privacy is not allowed on dot US domains (probably one reason it's a dud). It's Amazing how many people think it's their universal right to be able to discover other people's personal information.

Read my lips (famous quote), "You can still be reached if you have whois privacy."

Another good reason to use privacy. I'm getting credit card offers by mail, where the information originated from whois. How do I know for sure? The domain name was on the offer.

 

[ecigs.net]

WhoIs

To add a bit of detail:

When the feces hit the rotary device concerning registerfly, a registrar that was taking people's money but not buying/renewing/transfering the domains, after a great deal of stalling and blame shifting, ICANN(t) tried to get the master list of domains held by Registerfly. Apparently some domain owners who used privacy were not listed and lost their domains.

BTW Registerfly is still in business, last time I checked.

Whois is spam bait, but I am surprised how little I get from that source. I occasionally get a excited snail mail letter telling me that I need to renew and that this company will kindly do the honor for me for $60. - -I do not see how they can afford the stamps. I even got one spam letter that used the graphics from my little town's city hall envelopes - return address was different, they just stole the picture!

I voted, "no" on WhoIs Protection. I don't use it not anymore. I learned my lesson the hard way.

RegFly is still taking people's money and not registering anything. I lost hundreds of domains there during that disaster. Thankfully, I got rid of most of that F***ed up ProtectFly before the site went crazy. I'm lucky I didn't lose everything. It is cheaper to just get a hardware solution. I got a Barracuda to filter out all the junk mail. It stopped over a million pieces of spam last year. I have a lot of domains, so the yearly update charge costs a lot less than a privacy protection service.

This is from Wikipedia.org. I think it is something to be concerned about.:
Problems (with WhoIs)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHOIS

"Privacy: Registrant's contact details, such as address and telephone number, are made easily accessible to anyone over the internet for most top-level domains. Although some registrars offer private registrations (where the contact information of the registrar is shown), under ICANN rules the registrar or "private registration" company is then legal owner (lessor) of the domain."]