How many times have you been plagued with spammers and it just makes you bongo over how they manage to get your details? The internet is pretty connected and a simple Whois search on the domain that you host would reveal all your glory in a click. A simple Whois on your domain name would reveal your private details like your Email address, Phone number, Your address and everything that your provide at the time of registration of your domain name.
Domain services like Namecheap offers free Whois privacy at the time of signing up and it leaves pretty number of users in the shadow to go with it or not. The Whois database holds the record of all your private details with which you registered. A domain registrar must display the details of the domain name holder on the public database of Whois as a part of their accredition agreement.
But what if you prefer not to display your private confidential data on Whois database? Then there comes WhoisGuard into play. The concept of displaying users private registration data on the Whois database has been debated at the ICANN committee for the past seven years. So, here’s what WhoisGuard is actually all about.
Let’s break down what WhoisGuard exactly does and you could decide for yourselves if that’s what you need for the domain that you host.
What is WhoisGuard Privacy?
Here’s what WhoisGuard has to say about themselves:
“Everyday domain owner’s information is harvested by spammers from publicly available Whois to send spam. WhoisGuard avoids this issues by placing our information in Whois and provides an option to redirect email and regular mail to the customer’s real address. During the process of transferring the email, we try to avoid obvious junk email and regular mail, thus relieving the customer from junk.”
So, basically, WhoisGuard is a service that prevents your personal data registered at the time of domain registration from displaying on the Whois database. What WhoisGuard does is it puts their data on the public Whois database and prevents showing up your personal data like phone, number, address, Email; thereby preventing potential spammers and identity theft. Pretty convincing, eh?
How does Who Is Guard Protect your Domain ?
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The operation of WhoisGuard is pretty straightforward and clear. All it does is they put their own personal details on your Whois result, hiding any traces of your personal details.
Here’s an example without WhoisGuard, the regular result:
Registrant: John Doe
Address: 1234 New York Avenue, New York 10019.
Contact: +818 789 1297
Email: JohnDoe@JohnDoe.com
Here’s with WhoisGuard privacy:
Registrant: Domain Registrar, LLC
Address: 5786 New York Avenue, New York – 10019
Contact: +800 348 9456
Email: contact@domainregistrar.com
This should give you a basic idea of what WhoisGuard exactly does.
WhoisGuard displays their data on the public Whois database. Their Email and their contact details. But when someone contacts their Email, it would be forwarded to your registered Email after checking for Spam and other possible threats. This would simply mask your private details from the outside world!
The only time your data including phone number and address, would be available is when the registrar receives a court order against you or a domain service from a provider involving trademark disputes.
Do I need WhoisGuard privacy?
If all you care about is your privacy, then WhoisGuard is a must have service. If you don’t want your private details displayed on the Whois database, you could simply head to WhoisGuard and activate their service on your domain name. Or in other words, if you don’t want people to know that you are the owner of any particular domain, you should use Whoisguard service.
How WhoisGuard Would Help You?
- Protecting your Identity
With Unmasked Whois registration, all your private details is up for grabs on the internet. Making it much easier for Spam and Identity thefts. All your information is available at the click of a button on Whois, don’t let that that information get into the wrong hands!
- Kill Spam
We all hate spam, don’t we? No one would like to be bothered on their private Email with hoards of unwanted scams and traps. Having a Whois protected domain would definitely save your inbox from several unwanted spam.
So, now that you know what exactly is WhoisGuard and how it works, you can decide for yourselves if you need their service. If privacy and information protection is of your utmost priority, then definitely WhoisGuard is a go-go, otherwise not much to bother about.
If you enjoy watching videos, this is a video explanation of Whosisguard protection for domains:
Do remember, many domain registrar offers free whoisguard for the first year, and you need to pay next year for keeping the whoisguard service on. Specially if you own any controversial domain or a domain where you don’t want to be associated with, you should definitely take advantage of this domain add-on service.
Do you have WhoisGuard protected domain or have you preferred to go the usual way? Share your experiences and comments below on domain privacy.