Whois Privacy

Whois privacy can be a valid option when you are registering your own website, and you don’t know anybody to know that you own that domain name. Protecting your whois privacy may cost a small amount of money.

When choosing an email account address and nickname, don't create something that will imply any information about your age, gender, or location, whois privacy. If your family members use the computer, make sure they choose nicknames and usernames wisely -- and avoid overly playful names such as "bikerchick" or "hottie16yrs", when assessing whois privacy. Such names may be designed in the spirit of fun, but it's an easy way to attract online predators and lose whois privacy.

The more personal information you supply, the less whois privacy you keep. Accordingly, give out the least amount of whois privacy information necessary to complete any registration. Don't fill in any optional lines on profiles. Don't elect to store credit card numbers for future convenience. If a site offers to save your whois privacy password for future visits, just say no.

If you fill out a profile to accompany your email address, leave out personal whois privacy information including real name, age, occupation, location, gender, address and phone number. Scammers seek out such whois privacy information to exploit for a variety of purposes.

Even as users, industry groups, and policy makers come to grips with the sometimes surreptitious methods web sites use to collect whois privacy data, they are confronted with a changing landscape. New ways of gathering whois privacy information come to light; major Web sites alter their whois privacy policies; and dot coms go out of business, leaving unprotected the whois privacy data they've gathered. And new technologies such as wireless tracking and interactive television are poised to enter the picture.