Private Whois or let the world know who you are?
Big companies rarely have reason to use whois privacy on their domain names. Thousands of webmasters who work out of their homes feel otherwise. Sometimes the reasons are innocuous as avoiding whois harvested junk mail and telemarketers; other times the reasons are far more serious, such as death threats and stalkers.
Some web site developers own hundreds, or even thousands of websites. Old projects are often left forgotten beyond monthly checks from advertising networks.
There is a big downside to hiding your domain name contact info: what if someone wants to purchase your web site? For sole web site publishers, leaving a few thousand dollars on the table is more than worth it for remaining distraction free. However, would you feel the same way if it was tens of thousands of dollars or even hundreds of thousands?
My recommendation — keep your whois information hidden, but leave an open contact email on every site. At the very least, register your domain names under a corporation (or corporations) and not your personal home address.
Web surfers are anonymous, why can’t we (webmasters) be? There are a number of reasons why I want my Whois information private and I shouldn’t have to pay for the “privilege”. It should be standard.
Comment by chrispian — November 16, 2007 @ 7:47 pm
Be glad, german webmasters are not allowed to protect there whois information. If you want to register a “.de” Domain there is no possibility to hide your location. But you are right, visitors are anonymous, so should we.
Comment by Chris — November 17, 2007 @ 5:12 am
I for one want potential buyers to be able to find me. Almost all mine are registered under a corporate name with a real address and working email addresses.
I get tons of other junk mail and I no what the domain related junk mail is.
I don’t own domains that infringe or might otherwise make people mad.
I don’t have anything to hide. I think private whois is generally for people who have something to hide.
Comment by Diorex — November 19, 2007 @ 12:33 am
It is not possible to hide your Whois with .us domains either, I think it is not possible with any country specific domains.
Comment by digitalbrian — November 2, 2008 @ 11:43 am