Your Domain, Your Privacy
The following appeared in the Lockergnome Web Developers newsletter on February 4, 2004. Unfortunately,
this article is no longer on their website; otherwise, I would provide a link to it. Oh, you don't know what
Lockergnome is? They provide a number of web technology related resources. Click
here
to find out more. Anyway, I hope you enjoy my article.
Recently, I received an unwanted phone call at work from someone with whom I had agreed to trade music
CDs a few months earlier. To make a very long story short, I sent him the CD I owed him, but he did not
reciprocate. When I fought back by including his name and city/state on a bad trader page on my Web site,
he responded by sending me several threatening e-mails, which culminated in the above mentioned phone
call. He wouldn't tell me at the time how he got hold of my work number (I certainly didn't give it to
him), but I'm almost positive that he got it from the Whois database.
So what is the Whois database? Here's what Network Solutions says about it:
"The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the nonprofit body responsible for
accrediting domain name registrars, requires all accredited domain name providers (including Network
Solutions) to make your contact information publicly available."
That includes your e-mail address and whatever snail address you supplied when you registered your
domain. If that happens to be your home address, then literally the world can find out where you live.
While Network Solutions and other domain registrars have led the way in trying to eliminate these
requirements, the most effective means of ensuring your privacy is something you can do yourself,
making the registration of your domain private. There is a nominal fee involved to do this, but once
done, anyone who tries to access your personal information via Whois will instead be directed to send
snail mail inquiries to a proxy address concerning your domain. Your e-mail and snail addresses will
no longer be made available for the world to see, and will remain private.
Considering how small the fee is, private domain registration is definitely worth the expense. Don't
think you need to go that far to protect your privacy? Neither did I until my privacy was violated.
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