Who owns a domain name?

Ever wondered who owns a particular domain name? That’s where WHOIS (pronounced “who is”) comes in.

WHOIS is a system to query domain registries to find out details about a specific domain name.

Traditionally, a WHOIS query would return a wealth of information on a domain, including:

• The date the domain name was first registered
• The date the domain’s registry record was last updated
• The name of the registrar through which the domain is registered/managed
• The name of the individual or organization who registered the domain (the registrant)
• The name servers for the domain
• The full postal address, email, and phone number of the registrant
• The full postal address, email, and phone number of an administrative contact (if different from the registrant)
• The full postal address, email, and phone number of a billing contact (if different from the registrant)
• The full postal address, email, and phone number of a technical contact (if different from the registrant)

Now, obviously this raises a number of privacy concerns. Individual’s home addresses and contact phone numbers were potentially visible to anyone performing a WHOIS search.

WHOIS Privacy

So for many years, most domain registrars would up-sell an optional extra called “Domain Privacy” (or similar) whenever you bought a new domain name.

If a customer opted for this optional addon, then the individual’s name, phone number, and postal and email addresses would all redacted from public WHOIS records.

However, in 2016, along came the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (or GDPR).

The introduction of GDPR

Under GDPR, organizations have a legal responsibility to protect the privacy of their users and customers.

This meant that domain registrars now had to automatically hide and redact the personal information of all individuals from public WHOIS records.

“Domain Privacy” was no longer an “optional extra” that could be upsold to individuals buying a new domain name, but was now a legal requirement under the GDPR framework.

From the date after which GDPR became enforceable (25th May 2018), no domain registrar should be upselling “Domain Privacy” as a paid extra/addon.

Yet in 2024, some registrars are still doing just that!

Easyspace

Purchase a new domain name via easyspace.com, and they’ll try and upsell optional “Complete Domain WHOIS Privacy” for £6.50/year (~$8.50/year USD)

Yet, your personal details won’t appear in a WHOIS record search even if you don’t select the “optional” “Complete Domain WHOIS Privacy” option!

It’s a completely pointless “extra” that offers zero additional privacy benefits!

So the next time you purchase a new domain name, don’t fall for “whois privacy upsells”.