Are YOUR details on show?
Hey all,
So the other day I was in the live chat (where else do I go??) and one member was having an issue with domains and Godaddy up-sells (another story perhaps). Anyway, one thing lead to another and I mentioned about Namecheap and that they don't really up-sell apart from their WhoisGuard option.
Now in order to explain what this was I did a little research on another members site and was shocked to realise he didn't have this service turned on!
OK I'm rambling let me explain.
When you buy a domain, your details are put on the domain register saying you own it. All good. Except one thing, these details are then made public.
Your name.
Your address
Your email address.
Your phone number.
If I know your website, I can tell you all of that information simply by a quick search on a WhoIs site such as www.who.is
I remember when I first realised this, I hated it and perhaps a little scared, as I'm still not fully happy with my details being public, but my address?? I mean WTF?
Anyway, it is really easy to hide this information, but it does cost a little bit, per domain:
Namecheap (who I use) the service is called WhoIsGuard and its about $2.50 a year per domain - first year free.
GoDaddy its called Domains By Proxy and it is about $5-8 per year per domain.
If you are with someone else, check with them.
Now whilst this is perhaps an unnecessary cost, it certainly gives me a little more piece of mind.
So go on, go see if your details are online.
Do I care, NO, not really, it's far to late for me to try and hide my personal details, besides I have a local masonry business too.
The phone number I use online rings all the time, but I've been using it online for over 10 years, and if you think that your details don't get passed around etc think again. I'll only answer that phone number if I know who's calling or it has a local area code and name.
However, if I had a pen-name then I'd defiantly be using the privacy option on my domain's, plus I'd also be using multiple hosting accounts or at least different hosting IP's.
That's actually a good thing with WA hosting, they have several IP addresses that they use from what I can tell, so when you add a new domain it may end up on a different server using a different IP's.
One downside to hosting all websites on one IP is you may end up getting some "niche stealing stalker" who simply enters your domain into a IP/Domain lookup tool and see all websites hosted on that IP that it's found.
