Most of the whois hiding services cost money, so if I get this “service” for free now, I don’t have much sympathy with the whois guys.
If it’s about contacting people, they could make the abuse@ or webmaster@ address mandatory, then you can separate it from your normal email accounts, because the majority will be spam anyway.
Google Domains includes private registration - no additional cost. The service is simple with transparent (although not the best) pricing. Have a few domains there now. And yes, I'm aware that Google and privacy are strange bedfellows in the same sentence.
I second Google domains. For some domains it's worth the money, for others not so much. But still, you get really good DNS and a really nice + simple interface and the fact that I don't need to remember another pair of username/password makes it well worth it.
I've been hesitant to use Google for services like this after hearing about incidents where Google disabled everything associated with a Google account after detecting some violation of their ToS. I'd hate to lose my domain name because I, say, used the Maps API in some way that Google didn't appreciate. Google needs to be better at siloing their products before I'd consider using them for something that mission critical.
And often it's not a violation, it's an alleged, unspecified, un-counterable data point hidden in Google's cloud with no way for the user to determine what it might have been.
This is like saying that GoDaddy, Namecheap, or any of the countless number of other domain registrars own every domain registered with them. Performing a fraudulent transfer or DNS change would destroy their registry business and cause a PR nightmare.
Yeah the shenanigans are caused by rock bottom price market (similar to airfare shenanigans)
I moved everything to AWS DNS and am super happy about it. Domains are mission critical, I'll pay double without blinking to know that my stuff isn't gonna be held ransom over some contrived baloney
I'm currently using Google Domains for all of my domains... the really simple UX made the choice and lack of any in your face additional services was nice too.
Though, bulk editing would be nice, I'm about to move. :-( If anyone here works for google domains, it would be REALLY nice to be able to update all contact info on all domains at once.
I'm extremely surprised that they didn't offer some sort of API to it. I just spent the past 10 minutes looking to be sure, but that seems very unlike Google.
Google is probably the last I would give my personal details, actually I would rather gave them to Facebook. Whois is bothering me exactly becoase of google and similar companies.
> If it’s about contacting people, they could make the abuse@ or webmaster@ address mandatory
What about domain owners like mysql who have no email attached to their domains? I only have two personal domains, but I have never had a need for an accounts to be associated with the domains nor do I think I would ever check it.
Perhaps have those two account DNS lookups always go through the registrar who then forwards to your account email? Even that doesn't seem very fool proof, though.
There's no need for this. The SOA DNS record of every domain already includes an email contact (more by convention than requirement, I think?). It's mildly annoying because they have to replace the '@' with a '.' due to limitations in what can be in the field, but it's pretty easy to extract the correct information.
It's probably a question of whether the privacy features are separately charged or are bundled in a standard plan that's a bit higher priced than "bare" registration.
Since control panels, reputation, policies and other services like DNS are also things that can be bundled together, it's going to be difficult to say whether or how much you're paying for just the privacy component.
I've used Hover.com (owned by Tucows) for several years. In my opinion they are the anti-Godaddy. The things that should be free are and the extras are presented as just that. No trickery or beating you over the head with up-sales.
The higher renewal charge is odd, I hadn't noticed that before. It's nothing like most of the TLDs, but it is nearly half of what they list [1] as trending.
That aside, I'm still glad to pay a little more for the overall better service. If they were charging anything like the old Network Solutions prices, that'd be a different matter.
Yeah in all honestly a couple extra $ wouldn't put me off using them, I was more wondering if there was a decent reason behind it. Having said that I'm paying almost $20/year less for my io domains at Namecheap, that one's a bit of a steep difference
Once a domain is registered all they need to do really is process auto-renew payments, notify me if my card was declined for any reason, and make sure it's kept registered at the registry.
Unfortunately in any case though I've stopped at the gate, they don't appear to have an API
Any registrar making money on whois privacy has an option and motive to autorenew the privacy with the domain. If anything Namecheap bugs me with it because I don't want whois privacy on my domains!
If you don't want it, then you can use pretty much every other registrar that doesn't build it in.
But an issue with whois privacy is that if you ever don't have it for a period (like you forget to renew/autorenew), then it's now saved in a number of DNS/whois history services.
It doesn't seem that .us addresses would be subject to GDPR? One could see .com as an edge case, even though really Europeans should just appreciate the fact we let them on our internet b^), but .us is not in doubt.
I registered my domain on Namecheap and I got WhoisGuard at no additional cost, maybe it's only for the first year though? I made sure it was actually no additional cost by removing it to see the total and it was still the same price, $11/year. I say "no additional cost" but it might actually be more like "bundled cost."
>When you register an eligible new domain name or transfer an existing eligible domain into Namecheap, you'll receive the first year of WhoisGuard privacy protection absolutely FREE.
They run their own TLD's .design, .ink and .wiki [1] so these guys really know their stuff. Support is not 24/7, but usual office hours, but those who pick up your phone/email REALLY know what they are talking. Plus really cheap domains, they mentioned somewhere that they are aiming for $1 mark-up for all TLD's.
Me three. I own a few .ninja domains there. I didn't even notice they gave you free privacy until after having bought there. Every question I had was promptly answered in a few hours as well.
Where are the free services? And are they really free, or are they silently included in the domain cost? I’ve yet to see anyone beat Namecheap’s $13.75 for .com (2nd year onwards, with protection).
name.com charges extra for "whois protection." The e-mails I have registered for various contacts are pretty much spam buckets. You pretty much need a separate VoIP account to handle all the scam calls/voicemail too.
I get some calls/e-mails so quickly I wonder if they have some kind of live stream setup for registrations on some TLDs.
If it’s about contacting people, they could make the abuse@ or webmaster@ address mandatory, then you can separate it from your normal email accounts, because the majority will be spam anyway.