Maintaining your privacy is more difficult now than ever. Keeping your personal information safe from strangers is a constant challenge, which you should pay attention to.
If you have a website, it is very possible that your information is available on the web where anyone can find it, unless you have chosen to invest in domain privacy protection.
What is Domain Privacy Protection?
When you buy a domain name, part of the process is to provide your contact information to the company you are hiring. The company must pass that information to the ICANN WHOIS directory .
The purpose of this is that there is a clear record of who owns each existing website . Thus, if there is something posted on a website that violates the law, there must be a way to locate the owner. Although there are practical reasons for this directory to exist, it can also be seen as inconvenient.
Each website owner has the contact information they provide to their domain registration company, reflected in a directory where everyone can see it. If you are one of those who are careful about who you provide your data to, you may be interested to know that just by starting a website that information is available to anyone who wants to see it.
Although you must provide your information when you buy the domain, it is not necessary that it be easily accessible on the network . You can delete your contact information from the WHOIS directory, without breaking the law, by using a domain privacy service.
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People looking for your domain in the directory will continue to see the owner and an email address where they can get in touch. But they won’t see any other contact information . In addition, the email address will be a proxy that will allow people to get in touch, it will not be your real email address.
3 Reasons to Acquire Domain Privacy Protection
Domain privacy is not free, however the acquisition cost is not very high. If you are wondering about whether or not it is worth having your protected domain information, we present three benefits that can help you make a better decision .
1. Protect Your Personal Information
How comfortable do you feel with the idea that strangers know your address and phone number? Even if it is commercial information, it probably remains the place where you spend most of your time. The possibility that someone can find out where to find a simple internet search is fantastic and at the same time it can be disconcerting for many people.
In addition to the general discomfort you may feel, there is a real risk of identity theft. Every piece of information about you that is easily accessible to thieves means one more level of vulnerability.
There are many things you can do to protect yourself completely, but every little step you can take to make your personal information harder to find can reduce the risk.
2. Reduce Spam
We are all flooded with spam in many areas of our lives. Telephone calls from strange numbers. Emails from unknown sources that offer products you would never buy. It seems difficult to avoid it completely, but every time your contact information comes out on the open web, spammers will find it.
If they can easily access your email address and phone number in a directory, you are likely to receive more calls and spam. Domain privacy offers you protection against spammers who have one more place to find you.
3. Avoid Scams
If there is something worse than spammers, they are scammers. Scams on the internet are common and it is another area where the more people know about you, the more likely you are to be their target .
And the more information scammers have, the more convincing they can be. If they see that your domain is about to expire, they can impersonate the company where you registered it and try to make them pay instead of paying the real company.
Or they could try to hijack the domain by posing as you in the domain registration company to try to convince them to deliver the keys to your domain.
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That last part is difficult to achieve, since companies have implemented procedures to make it difficult. But having access to your personal information along with the details about your domain registration makes this type of stay much easier.
How to Obtain Domain Privacy
If you are ready to add another level of privacy to your life and your website, then investing in domain privacy is quite simple . Check with your hosting company to see if they offer it as a complementary service. If you use starthosts, all you have to do is:
You have to create a ticket with their support- team. There you must indicate for which domain you want to activate the privacy service.
We will send you an invoice to make the payment.
Once the payment is made, our team will activate the privacy of the domain, and that’s it!
