7 min read

The digital world is full of vulnerabilities. There is a hacker attack every 39 seconds. Online security breaches have become a major fear for website owners. While creating a new website, you have to choose a domain that represents your website. While making the domain’s registration, you have to provide your contact and other personal information that can be visible to hackers, telemarketers, and spammers. Have you ever heard of the WHOIS directory? It is a place where they find the information on a website and identify the owner, what hosting service they use, their phone number and address, and other related data. You need to consider the domain privacy protection to keep your data secure. Many domain service providers also offer domain protection to their clients. In this article, there is a discussion of domain privacy and why you should consider it.

What is Domain Privacy Protection?

When you register the domain name of your website, there are few options available for you to privacy for that domain. If you think that domain-privacy protection is important, then WHOIS data will get substituted with a forwarding service, for example, domains are exchanged by Proxy and no one on the web can view your personal information. Domain-privacy protection is used for defending the data, you give while registering your domain name for the website. The WHOIS information comprises your name, phone number, email,l and other private addresses that you have provided. If you are concerned about your website security then you should go for domain protection, because without using any domain protection service, your personal information can be reviewable by anyone online and it can also cause data breaches.

Protect Your Data

The domain name privacy protection can help you to protect your data. You have to offer your domain name registrar with your authentic personal information. Otherwise, your name would be terminated because of terms and conditions violations. In the WHOIS database, the personal data is publicly displayed as it is an ICANN requirement. If you do not want to leak out your personal information, then you should have domain privacy protection. It ensures that your personal information is secured and no one can use it by illegal means. What is even riskier, is when some companies are involved in something known as ‘data scraping’ to gather personal data from sources available publicly such as WHOIS, to sell it to third parties (can be your competitors).

Maybe at the latest, the most related case is Facebook’s allegations of selling the data of its users to advertisers. This is not a minor issue to be ignored, and you must pay attention to your cybersecurity. So, you can protect your data and keep your identity hidden with domain privacy protection.

Keep Your Identity Hidden

As your whole personal data is available to everyone, it can be accessed by hackers to steal your identity. They can use your name and other contact data for fraudulent activities and theft. So, you should select domain privacy protection to avoid any sort of issues related to online data protection. Using domain privacy protections will reduce theft issues by providing strong domain name protection. When someone steals your identity, you can use it to do irregular illegal activities. You can save yourself from huge trouble with website privacy protection.

Fewer Chances of Hacking

You have invested a lot of time in building your website. If it is not completely secured, there is a possibility that someone will hack the domain transfer. It means that someone could get into the domain control panel and transfer the website to their name, without your permission. Domain privacy protection protects you from these hazards by shielding your private information. If you don’t have any domain privacy protection with you it is like leaving your house open for strangers. If you have a habit of keeping your house locked to defend yourself, you should also be concerned about protecting your domain from online strangers, such as hackers.

Stop Unwanted Contact

While domain name registration, you have to give your contact number with your personal information. Every web user can view this information. your telephone numbers can be misused by other people and you may receive annoying calls. If you want to avoid these types of unwanted calls, then domain privacy protection is something you should have.

Remember that if your confidential data gets into the wrong hands, you may get more spam and junk emails/calls. Whenever you allow Domain Privacy Protection, your data is concealed from domain hijackers and unwanted solicitors. One thing you should keep in mind is that the spammers can also use your business data for hacking and taking over the business. Therefore, Domain Privacy Protection can also help you keep your online business & domain protected.

Avoid Illegal/Spam Emails

by having domain privacy protection, you can get firm control over junk postal mail You will not accept annoying spammy emails from hackers. Using domain privacy protection, you can effortlessly control the junk emails and spam from an email account. You cannot deny the significance of domain name protection if you want to secure yourself from any trouble in the future.

To the registrar, you have to give your private information via your email address; your email addresses can be used by hackers for unsolicited commercial emailing. This can create problems for you online. If you want to avoid spammy emails and you no longer want to waste your time checking these useless emails, then you should have convinced privacy. Thus, domain privacy protection is seriously needed. It is not just a sales call, you receive it through emails.

There are tons of spam emails you can get by keeping your data unprotected. All spammers know how to find your confidential information through public directories, and to target small business owners, email is probably the easiest channel. Are you getting lots of spam you have not subscribed to? Look at your spam inbox and count the emails you received, and from where they are coming. If these are junk emails, it’s because your details are exposed to spammers.

Avoid Unwanted Solicitation

When you are unable to control your contact information dissemination through the WHOIS database, you can be an easy target for hackers and spammers. As you know spammers can penetrate the business email system – triggering more problems for you and your clients. Your personal contact information may be accessed by the telemarketer, who has been notorious for scouring the WHOIS database searching for contacts for their phone lists.
You Should Use Authentic Information in Domain Registration

You’re perhaps questioning if there is a way for the domain to register with false information. Why give your personal information to the domain registrar and listed on WHOIS?

One thing you should keep in mind is that you can only register your domain by providing is that authentic information. All of the data you give out to the registrar is verified. It is very similar to registering any asset through a governing authority. Furthermore, as a small business owner, authenticity is a must to win the trust and respect of your customers from the beginning. To build your authority and trust in the market, you cannot afford to be fake.

Stay in Control

Domain privacy protection is very important to keep things in control. The private domain registration keeps your data out of the WHOIS database, you can decide what info you want to make public via your business site. Offer “safe” contact data that your customers and you can use comfortably.

Hide Your Information from Competitors

When your complete information is saved through domain privacy protection services, doing, you can protect your competitors from accessing your information. Your business and personal data cannot be escaped if you are using domain privacy protection services. Your business information can be stolen by the competitors and they can use it to make their business strategies. You cannot stand if your competitors are using similar business strategies as you are, so you have to keep your information protected. If you don’t want your competitors to access your personal and business information, then you should use domain privacy protection services. It is easier for your rival to stalk you if your private information is accessible easily. They will identify you, your location, and also your contact information.
As an online startup, when you have limited resources, any of your data exposed to competitors can be very costly, particularly if you are offering something innovative in the market. Thus, you should hedge your risk, to be on the safe side you should not show all your cards to them, and stop competitors from stalking you by using domain privacy protection.

You Can Get Domain WHOIS Privacy Service

While registering your domain name, the registrar uses ICANN to enter your personal contact information. WHOIS is a service that manages your overall data regarding domain registration. The WHOIS of your domain name contains your private information such as Name, Address, Company Name, Email Address, Contact Number, etc. as your domain name’s contact details. If someone on the web performs a WHOIS lookup then he will be able to access all of your personal information. This is true for some ccTLDs and all gTLDs, as most of the ccTLDs follow country-specific rules.

The major reason why WHOIS lists all of your private information is that ICANN wants to give its internet users the ability to confirm the website’s credibility and recognize the owner, given the open-source nature of the internet. ICANN commands the registrars to screen all the data submitted by registrants for accuracy. In case the information that a registrant delivers is false or incorrect it could result in the domain name cancellation. However, you can still use the Domain Protection services on the domain name. There are many online Domain Privacy Protection service providers that that offer you domain privacy services, so you can protect the private data that you have submitted while domain name registration.

Final Thoughts!

In this article, I have shared with you some of the major reasons why you should be using domain name privacy protection services. If you are an online business owner then it is significant for you to acquire domain name protection services to keep your online data protected and secure from hackers, spammers,s and telemarketers.
Many small businesses don’t even know if their domain name information is protected because they are rushing through the domain registration process. If you don’t have domain privacy protection, you have two options:
Option 1: Purchase domain privacy protection during new domain name registration. This is a good time to do it; from the beginning to reduce your risks.

Option 2: you can also add domain privacy to your existing domain. If you have checked your domain privacy recently and realized it is not secure enough, you can buy a privacy protection service anytime.

I hope the information that I have shared in this article will be helpful and make it more clear to you why online privacy protection is important for you. If you still have any questions regarding online privacy protection, you can ask me in the comments section.