Ask HN: Any reason to get WHOISGuard? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Any reason to get WHOISGuard?

6 pointsjstreebin8 comments

All I've found in the past is this makes it a pain in the ass to kill the domain. Any good reason to use this? That is, if you're doing something you don't mind your name attached to.

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Really, it is a trade-off between the advantages (displaying professionalism (openness = trust = professionalism); offering opportunities to be contacted) and disadvantages (lots of spam, just like being in the phonebook).

By making it easy to contact you through your website, you can directly affect how advantageous it is to keep WHOIS records public. Likewise, you can mitigate the disadvantages by having in place efficient methods of dealing with spam.

I offer two personal anecdotes.

Years ago, when I was maybe 13 or 14 (7-8 years ago), I setup a simple image hosting website. My WHOIS information was not guarded.

My spam filter was pretty good, and I didn't mind - keeping in mind that this was a relatively tiny website - deleting maybe the single spam message a week (simply classifiable by their headlines). I did receive a spam phonecall (!) from some no-name domain company, and that did freak me out a little.

But I also received an important email - not through the website's form - offering to purchase the website for $400. Considering that the name was worth nothing (something like imagehoster4u.net or w/e), the script was generic, the design horrible and the traffic minimal w/ horrible RPM, $400 was a great offer that proved genuine (big money for me then!).

If it is a personal website, who-is-privacy is ok. If business, then better have the details there as anyways you need to provide these details one way or the other on your website. Normally before I purchase a service or even provide my email id to a New service (read stranger), I check if the domain is legit. If its behind a who is privacy, I would hesitate in giving my info to them. But that's just me.

If you don't mind your contact information (potentially residential address) out in the wild, I would suggest guarding your WHOIS information.

Doxing, increased email spam, and spam snail mail are all reasons I chose to protect my info.

If you don't have a business address (just home), and you don't think it will harm your business to do so (if the domain name pertains to such), you can get a P.O. Box (in the U.S.). Just remember to actually check it reasonably frequently, just in case.

You can also get a "street address" by purchasing a similar "P.O. Box" service from a private party, e.g. The UPS Store. Although it's pretty easy to figure out what such an address is, i.e. don't expect to "fool" anyone who takes a halfway serious look at your address. It does make receiving non-USPS packages possible.

I tend to favor not listing my personal address, if for no other reason than you just never know what problem(s) might show up unanticipated.

Definitely lots of spam via snail mail - even more so if you've just incorporated a new business.

Thanks! Looks like beyond spam/privacy/pain in the ass to get rid of domain, I'm not missing much

Yes. Most of the time it comes free from the registrar (NameCheap).

Could you please elaborate?

While the service being free means that there is no barrier for usage, this is not itself a reason to use it.

The OP stated that he - hypothetically - does not mind his name attached publicly to the domain. Can you please provide some reasons as to why he should care and, thus, why "yes", he should use it?

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