whois privacy/alternatives

R

Red Squirrel

[H]F Junkie
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Currently I use a PO box for the address and a free phone number that goes to a voice mail, and you have to use their proprietary app to open it. Not the most ideal, not that I actually get any phone calls there. I want to drop the PO box as they don't do preauthorized payment so I'm always scared I forget to go pay. I use it for offsite backups too but I will just start to bring those at work with me instead. It's also kinda expensive (like 300ish bucks per year)

I know registrars offer whois privacy services but that is quite expensive per domain. I'm just wondering what everyone does to ensure their home address does not appear in the whois? I don't care that much about phone number at this point as I'll stick to that voice mail service.
 
Red Squirrel said:
I know registrars offer whois privacy services but that is quite expensive per domain.
Click to expand...

Are you trying to protect hundreds of domains or something? I don't know who your registrar is but NameCheap costs $2.88 per domain for a year of Whois protection.

http://www.namecheap.com/products/whoisguard.aspx

As far as your postal address goes, I just have it sent to my work, who then promptly discards it for me :D
 
I've seen cheaper P.O. boxes around some for around $60ish/year. $300 sounds like the price for a larger box. Make sure you have the smallest box available and maybe look for one further away from where you are.

You certainly couldn't just lie on your whois information. That would be wrong. ;)
 
Actually come to think of it, if I buy whois protection for one domain, can I just use that information on all my domains? That way I'm only paying for one domain. Or is that against the TOS? I imagine it would be...

I have 30 or so domains. I've never actually received anything on the admin contact but I imagine it would be required in a domain dispute situation or if the registrar chances some policy where I need to physically receive mail to do a change or something like that. Then again, can such situation ever occur if I always renew? It's not like I'm with Network Solutions where you need to sacrifice your first born and send it to them if you want to make any kind of change. :D I'm with DomainIT.
 
As long as you provide working phone/fax numbers (virtual ones) and a mail address, noone should care whether the domain belongs to Jack Shit or your real name.
 
Except for name and email I've been filling in 'private' or zeroes in the other fields for a bunch of domains on Godaddy for years without issue. I should use one of my Google Voice numbers for contact but am hesitant because I know web crawlers are going to add it to spam marketing call lists.
 
As I understand it, a non-working contact can be a reason to disconnect the domain, depending on your TLD.

I'd rather provide working contacts than a real name. There are VoIP providers who will set you up with phone and fax numbers and send you via e-mail anything that pops up there.

Working contacts are the first line of "sensors" to detect upcoming trouble.
 
Like I said I've had them for years and a lot of them are as old as 2002. They're currently parked otherwise if they were active sites I'd be more cautious.
 
That's good to know, so I can get away with just putting 123 fake st or something like that in the address fields? The rest I got covered already and are valid but also private. The address is really the big one, I don't want people on the Internet to be able to know my real address that easily.
 
Just pick a remotely valid looking address with Google Maps and a generic name like John Smith or what's common in that area.

You could claim to be a very small company and pick a business area where other companies share offices.

You could outright invent your own Whois Privacy Inc. in some remote country where noone knows how to check a company registration anyway.

Make the whois look valid at first sight and provide working contacts. That should be good enough to keep most trouble away, unless you're planning to break laws.
 
Namesilo.com offers privacy for free. They're also cheaper than NameCheap.

I had to evac-transfer an expired domain away from GoDaddy to avoid the wild "reclaim" fee. I was prepping to go to NameCheap, but found a recommendation for NameSilo, which not only ends up being cheaper, but also includes free Whois privacy. And of course, there are lots of positive reviews (as far as I could find).
 
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