Registrant data · Privacy · 2 minutes
How to enable whois privacy — Who Can See Your Registrant Details — and Who Can Reach You Anyway
Privacy is a shield against harvesters, not a disguise: the parties who can compel disclosure still can.
The short answer
WHOIS privacy replaces your published contact details with a proxy service's, so a public lookup returns the proxy rather than your name, address and telephone number — while the registry continues to hold the real registrant record underneath.
It takes two minutes to switch on. What it does not do is make you unreachable: registries, registrars, dispute panels and law enforcement all work from the record underneath, which is exactly why that record has to stay accurate.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 24 August 2026
Beginner
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This page separates three things people tend to run together: what a public lookup shows today, what a privacy service adds on top, and who can still get to the registrant regardless.
The switch itself is trivial. The judgement is in keeping the hidden record correct and the relay address monitored.
What a public lookup actually returns now
The old picture — full name, street address, telephone number and email in plain view for anybody who asked — is no longer the default. Data protection rules mean most personal registrant fields are redacted before publication, and the lookup protocol itself has largely moved on from WHOIS to RDAP, which returns the same record in a structured form with the same redactions applied.
What remains visible is generally the domain's status flags, its creation, update and expiry dates, the registrar of record and the nameservers. Those are the fields that matter operationally, which is why a lookup is still the first thing to run when a name is behaving strangely.
What the privacy service adds on top
Redaction is applied by the registry and the registrar; a privacy service goes further by substituting a proxy organisation's details for yours in the record that is published, including for the endings and the registrant types where redaction does not apply. Business registrants, in particular, often find their details published in full without one.
Contact still reaches you through a relay address. Anything sent to the masked address is passed on, which is convenient until the day a transfer approval or a legal notice comes down the same channel and nobody has ever confirmed the relay works. Test it once, today, rather than discovering it during a five-day transfer window.
Who can still reach the registrant
The registry and the registrar hold the real record and always have. Dispute panels get it as part of a complaint, courts can order disclosure, and law enforcement has established routes. Privacy raises the cost of finding you casually; it does not put you beyond the reach of anyone with a legitimate process.
Treat it, then, as protection against bulk harvesting and cold calling rather than as anonymity. The registrations that go badly wrong are the ones where somebody assumed the second and filed details to match.
The record underneath must stay true
Registrant data is required to be accurate, and deliberately false details are grounds for suspending or cancelling a registration. More practically, ownership disputes and transfers are settled against the real record: if it names somebody who left the company in 2019, that is who the process treats as the holder.
Turn privacy on at registration rather than a month later, because historical lookup data is archived by third parties and those archives do not forget the window when your details were on display. And update contact details well ahead of any planned transfer: on many generic endings a registrant change starts a sixty-day transfer lock.
Domains, DNS and hosting under one login
The zone, the delegation and the registrar lock are all edited from the same account, which is why most jobs in this library take minutes rather than a ticket and a wait.
Order an annual plan and the first year of the name's registration is included.
- Written for the person who holds the name
- Exact record types, hosts and values
- No step that quietly loses your mail
- Someone reachable while the change is still landing
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
Redaction and privacy told apart
What the registry already hides and what a proxy service adds on top — two different mechanisms that get confused constantly.
Honest about the limits
Registries, dispute panels and courts still reach the registrant, and the guide says so rather than selling anonymity.
The relay address tested
A masked contact is only useful if messages actually arrive, so testing it is a step rather than an afterthought.
Accuracy treated as protection
The hidden record is what a transfer or a dispute is decided on, which makes keeping it true a security measure.
Timed against the sixty-day lock
Contact changes can freeze transfers for two months, so the guide says when to make them.
Two minutes, and it stays done
The switch is in the client area and applies from the moment you save it.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Look yourself up first
Run a public lookup on your own name and read what comes back. That tells you which fields the registry already redacts and which are still on display — the ones on display are what a privacy service is for.
- 2
Switch privacy on in the domain's settings
In the client area, open the settings for that name and enable WHOIS privacy. From then on the registry publishes the proxy service's details in place of yours, on the fields that were public.
- 3
Send a message through the masked address
The relay forwards anything sent to the published contact. Prove it works today, while nothing depends on it, because one day a transfer approval or a formal notice will arrive by exactly that route.
- 4
Check the record underneath is still true
Privacy hides what the public sees; it is not licence to file fiction. Confirm the registrant name, address and email on the account are accurate and monitored, and make any corrections well before a planned transfer.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- Registrar lock and auto-renew both switchable from the client area
- Full zone control — A, CNAME, MX and TXT — from the panel
- Free SSL on every plan, reissued before the old certificate lapses
- Spam and virus screening in front of every mailbox at your name
- Mailboxes that answer at the name you hold
- People on the support desk every hour of every day
- A daily copy, with restores you run yourself from the panel
- No set-up charge at any point, and no joining fee
- Money back within 30 days on hosting plans, 7 on reseller
- 99.9% uptime as the target, watched around the clock
Frequently Asked
Questions we field again and again
Is WHOIS privacy billed separately here?
No — it forms part of the package rather than a monthly add-on. Given that most registrant data is redacted by default under current data protection rules anyway, a registrar still charging every month for privacy is charging for something the rules largely already provide.
Does privacy change who owns the name?
Not in the slightest. Your rights as registrant are exactly what they were, and the proxy details appear only in public lookups. What does need watching is the account email address staying current, because that inbox is where practical control of the name actually sits.
Will a privacy service stop a dispute complaint reaching me?
No. Dispute procedures obtain the underlying registrant details as part of the process, and a complaint proceeds whether or not you engage with it. Privacy affects casual lookups, not formal ones.
Why do my details still appear on a country-code lookup?
Country-code registries set their own publication policy, and several run their own opt-out schemes rather than accepting a third-party proxy — some publish business registrants in full as a matter of principle. Read the registry's own privacy policy for that ending rather than assuming the generic behaviour applies.
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