To hide or not to hide – do you keep your WHOIS information public or keep it private?

domain-privacy-protection

So I wrote a post yesterday about Go Daddy’s heavy promotion of their privacy protection services. I personally don’t keep my WHOIS information private because, my domains are for sale, and I want to make it as easy as possible for people who want to buy a domain to contact me.

Of course that’s just my opinion, and I’m just one person. A number of people commented on this post saying that they disagreed with me and that privacy is the way to go.

First things first, I don’t think there is a right answer here. Second, both Uniregistry and NameCheap offer free privacy protection so if you disagree with me and want to keep your WHOIS info private, know that you can do it for free and don’t have to shell out $7.99 per domain, per year. Honestly, just think about it, this pretty much doubles the cost of your .COM renewals every year for each domain under privacy.

Here’s my reasoning for keeping my WHOIS info public:

  • I ran an experiment some time ago and learned that I got a LOT less offers if I turned privacy protection on
  • At the end of the day I do want to make it as easy as possible for people to contact me if they want to buy my domain names
  • I’ve never had an issue with spam as a result of keeping my WHOIS info public, sure I get an email here or there but it’s never bugged me
  • Like the examples I gave in my post yesterday, spammers and scammers ALWAYS have their WHOIS info private, whenever I personally see a domain that is privacy protected it always makes me think twice about what the owner is doing with the domain…do they have something to hide?

That’s just me thought, and I’m only one person. So I thought I’d expand the conversation that I kicked-off last night and ask my readers – do you prefer to keep your domain names under privacy protection or not?

I want to hear from you, comment and let your voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton