Private Domain Names
Nov 1st, 2005 by Neo
Why Private Domain Names?
When you register a domain name, ICANN (the domain names governing body) requires that your name, email address, mailing address, and phone number are made publicly available. Anyone can see your personal information using a Whois lookup anywhere and anytime. Spammers and junk mailers often search through the Whois database to create mailing lists. That’s right. Your personal information is exposed 24 hours a day to these people.
The easiest solution to this problem is of course to use Private Domain Names to protect your contact information.
How does Private Domain Names work?
This service will replace your contact information with the service provider’s. They will forward any correspondence to you, after filtering out all the spams and junk emails. The cost for this service varies. My domain name registrar GoDaddy (World Largest Domain Registrars) charges $8.95 per year for this service. However, should you want to get some discount just like myself, you could take up their Private Domain Name service at the point of registering your domain name. If you did that, they will give you a big discount for the domain name where you only need to pay $1.99. See below:
Note: $0.25 ICANN fee is added to the $1.99 domain name to come to a sub-total of $2.24 above.
Domains by Proxy
GoDaddy’s Private Domain Names service is provided by Domains by Proxy. The member control panel in Domains by Proxy is very simple and straight forward. Basically, it is as easy as logging in and tell the system where to forward correspondences to.
Domains by Proxy’s simple setup
Okay, all the hard work is now done. Let’s test if this really works. Do a whois search for Hot-screensaver.com using GoDaddy.
Compare this with whois search for Minishorts.net.
Obviously this domain name is not protected by any privacy service. There is quite a lot of private contact information there… Anyway want to ask her out for a date or something? 
Updated 1 November 2005 4:50pm
The personal contact information are masked out since some readers pointed out it is not right to post this kind of information. However, I would like to emphasize that all these are freely available on the Internet available to anyone, anywhere and anytime… if the owners are truely concerned, they should protect their information with some privacy services.
Anyway, Happy New Year!!! I’m also...
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Kao… 11.19… I se namecheap, free one whois guard for the same 8.88 lol
Wong, I haven’t try namecheap before. How is namecheap? Good or not?
woah u sure its right to put up her number there??
phone numbers are cheap, anyone can get my phone number off my irresponsible ‘friends’. however, in your efforts to ‘provide information’ on top of earning a quick adsense buck, you disregard the fact that invasion of privacy is a crime.
even if i were julia roberts, i would find this atrocious, however, and fortunately for you, i am merely minishorts.
you, being a father of a child and a husband to your wife, should know better.
cyber-red, it may not be right after all; but her numbers are all over the Internet already in the whois databases.
minishorts, sincerely apologize for not thinking with my right mind when I did the posting. I have masked out the contact details. Please consider getting privacy service for your domain name so that it is fully protected.
Heh… Just notice about phone number
Why doon’t you tried o nyour own with and without privacy protestion ealier 
Oh yea, I tried both Godaddy and namecheap. Godaddy sound very secure for me, namecheap somewhat secure as well, but then, namecheap server faster :S
Thanks for the heads-up, I never knew there was such a thing as a ‘private’ domain name.
Thank you!
which part of my comment did you not understand?
anyone (not only you) who has been on the internet for a considerable amount of time would understand the implications of a whois look-up, and like i said. phone numbers are cheap, you can get my number off any irresponsible friend, and i leave name cards everywhere. i’m not too concerned about that.
masking out my details does not discount the fact that you have failed to request my permission prior to using me as an example. the number may or may not be real, so is the name. all you have done is to presume and assume and then, gleefully taken my name, of all names, as an example. why not use wendy cheng? or kenny sia? I assure you, it would be equally WRONG. we’re human beings and we’re not to be used as examples at will, mr jacky.
what i’m furious at is the fact that you being supposedly a matured man of a family have no sense to think before you post someone up as an example. for your information, i am a real person and i do not appreciate being dragged up to be cited as an example for the sake of your ‘information-providing’ services. this is nothing but a cheap thrill.
minishorts, you don’t have to request permission from anyone to perform a whois lookup. it’s public domain information. you were not being used as an example, your domain name was. there are no ‘implications’ of a whois lookup.
Paul: true. no permission was needed to do a whois lookup. I can do the same for many.
and jacky, in kinder words, i hope you understand that minishorts.net is not a mere domain name, as paul has wanted to implicate. it is synonymous with who i am. you are free to do a whois lookup, but you are not free to employ the whois lookup results of minishorts.net as an example here.
there has been calls for new privacy standards to be enforced in whois lookups, but nothing is solid yet.
cira has a new proposed whois policy here
http://www.cira.ca/en/Whois/whois_privacy-policy.html
cdt also has something here
http://www.cdt.org/dns/030904cdt.shtml
Or… you can just fill in your fake personal details
Paul, thanks a lot for the information (the links).
let the flood gate be opened. :X