Do you need WHOIS privacy protection?

We’ve covered most parts of what a domain name is, the difference between a registry, registrar and registrant and what the WHOIS database is, but in this Insight we are going to discuss WHOIS protection for your domain names for individuals in the EU, UK or Worldwide and whether it can still be necessary.

Prior to 2018 the WHOIS database publicly published the contact details of every domain name registrant unless they specifically purchased a WHOIS privacy protection service from their registrar.

In 2018 the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) law came into effect within the EU and subsequently the Data Protection Act 2018 within the UK. Since then WHOIS contact information is now publicly redacted by default for anyone located within the UK or EU which generally removes the need to use a WHOIS privacy service regardless of which registrar the domain has been registered through.

This applies by default to all TLDs including the most popular .uk, .com, .org & .net domains registered by an individual. Unless you have explicitly opted to show your contact information on the WHOIS database, or your domain name is linked to a charity or limited company.

Many other registrars will still publicly publish the contact details for registrants located outside of UK and EU. However at purely.website we believe in the data protection principles that the GDPR upholds, and we feel that extending the benefits of the GDPR to registrants worldwide is the right thing to do. Therefore we exclusively uses registries and upstream providers that redact the WHOIS details for all individual registrants regardless of their location.

So, no matter where you may be physically located there is very little need to use WHOIS privacy protection when using purely.website domain registration services.

We pride ourselves on transparency, clear pricing and honest advice so at this time we have chosen not to offer a WHOIS privacy product as we feel it’s unnecessary and in reality very few people if any actually require it.

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Author: Jamie Moynahan
Jamie is the Support Manager at Pipe Ten, being an integral part of the team for well over 10 years. Jamie is a seasoned expert with the intricacies in the fast changing world of website applications, hosting and domain name registration. This broad knowledge is instrumental to the entire customer support experience which purely.website members have come to rely on. Jamie has written and published hundreds of articles about hosting and managing website applications and domain name registration management processes.