Hi,
I’ve bought a .co.uk domain through www.4dreg.com. I’d like to remove my details from the WHOIS directory, since I don’t want my competitors to know that I own the domain. Is there a way to do this? (Is it to do with the registrar just not having the facility to opt out, or is it legally not possible?)
Thanks.
Godaddy offers private domain registration for $ 4 a year.
http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/dbp/landing.asp?isc=Gppg101204
It’s free if you buy in bulk (3 or more).
NameCheap offers WHOIS protection for free with all registerations. I believe (though I am not 100% sure), that you can buy WhoisGuard for a domain on any registrar. Look into it and see what you can find out.
on godaddy? I have like 30+ domains there and there isn’t an option to hide my whois info … or is it only available when you at the time you buy 3 or more?
In your GoDaddy account go to your domain list… to the right of each domain there’s a link titled “Upgrade Registration.” Click that link with one or more domains selected and the form for adding private registration will come up on the right side of the page. That form has several types of private registration that you can choose from.
My understanding is that co.uk names are not allowed to have private registration if the they point to a commercial site. Personal .co.uk sites may have limited hidden whois. I emailed nominet.org.uk when a competitor stole my content. Within 24 hours thay had the owner showing real info.
Just to follow up - I bought the WhoisGuard from namecheap, but it doesn’t work (errors on their site). They don’t have telephone support and don’t seem to reply to emails within 30 hours at least.
I’ve just Googled namecheap and it seems they are prone to zero support, which is quite frustrating. My experience so far says avoid them like the plague.
It took a couple of days and emails to NameCheap before whoisguard was working properly and emails were being bounced to my real emal address. Send some test messages to your whoisguard email and make sure they do forward to your real email address
Hiding registrant’s details is against the ICANN policy. Why to hide, if you are doing a legal business? If you will hide your details many search engines will not index your site also (as I have learnt from others).
When I said in bulk, this applies to when you initially register a group of domains with GD.
To get the free private registration added to your domains, after to find out which domains you want to buy, select the business registration service option after you pick your domains, then click continue. When the list of domains and services that are in your cart comes up, private registration appears for free in the list. Business registration adds $5 for each domain, but you can then click “remove” (or something like this) from the cart for each domain, and you’ll have private registration service added to each domain in your cart.
Note, you have to register at least 3 domains at a time (when you register new domains) in order to get the free private registration. Hope this helps.