WHOIS privacy is one of the most misunderstood parts of owning a domain. Here's what it actually does — and doesn't.
What WHOIS Actually Is
WHOIS is a public database anyone can query to see who owns a domain: registrant name, address, phone, email, and registration dates. It exists for accountability, but it also means anyone — including spammers and scrapers — can pull your contact info.
What Privacy Protection Replaces
When enabled, your personal contact details are replaced in the public record with the registrar's proxy contact information. Legal requests can still reach the real registrant through the registrar, so it is not anonymity — it's a shield against casual scraping and spam.
What It Doesn't Protect Against
It doesn't hide who owns the domain from a court order, a UDRP dispute proceeding, or the registrar itself. It also doesn't affect your site's hosting-level privacy — a separate matter entirely.
Is It Free?
Increasingly yes — most major registrars now include it at no extra cost, partly driven by GDPR-related redaction requirements. A few still charge for it; check before you buy. See our registrar comparison for which ones include it.
Should You Enable It?
For nearly everyone, yes — there's little upside to having your home address and personal phone number in a public, bot-scraped database, and effectively no downside to hiding it.
For more, see our full guide index or contact us.