Is my contact information private? Does it appear in the WHOIS records?
As you may know, it's possible to use the "WHOIS" system to look up the name, postal address, telephone number and e-mail address of any domain name owner using Web sites such as Uwhois.com.
We strongly dislike this system for privacy reasons. However, like all domain name registration companies, we are legally required to provide valid contact information for each domain name owner. That's where our WHOIS privacy service comes in.
On this page:
Our free WHOIS privacy service
Domain names registered with Tiger Technologies include free WHOIS privacy protection. To increase your privacy, we can act as a forwarding service for you, allowing the WHOIS information to show contact details that are valid ways to reach you (and which therefore meet the legal requirement that we publish your contact information), but which are less revealing. Specifically:
- We publish our post office box address instead of your address.
- We publish our telephone number instead of your phone number.
- We publish a specially formatted e-mail address that ends in "@whois.tigertech.net" instead of your real address. The special address forwards mail to your real e-mail address.
This system gives you privacy protection against junk mail, sales calls, and spammers. We'll discard junk postal mail (including most non-registered mail) sent to our post office box, we'll tell most callers you prefer to be contacted only at addresses or phone numbers you post on your Web site (if any), and we'll apply our strongest spam filtering to the forwarding e-mail address. We will forward any registered postal mail or phone messages related to legal issues, and our mail servers will forward non-spam e-mail to you.
Although this system enhances your privacy, your rights are still protected:
- Your name (or company name, if you entered one on our forms) is still listed in the WHOIS records as the domain's legal owner, maintaining your ownership rights. Unlike some other companies, we never list ourselves as the owner; doing so can make it difficult for you to transfer your domain name.
- Legal notices will still reach you.
- Important e-mail such as domain name transfer approval notices will still reach you.
There is no extra charge for WHOIS privacy, even though many other domain registration companies charge a substantial annual fee for similar services.
Limitations of the privacy system
The privacy system provides excellent protection against unwanted marketing and spam. It also provides good protection against casual strangers viewing your personal contact details. However, we should emphasize that it isn't foolproof. In particular, we may release your direct contact information to parties who have a legitimate need to contact you for legal reasons (such as people alleging copyright or trademark violations). We may also disable the privacy feature if we receive reasonable allegations that you have violated our Terms of Service.
In addition, WHOIS privacy for postal addresses and phone numbers may not be available for domain names ending in .us due to legal restrictions from the United States Department of Commerce, which sets the requirements for all .us domain names. We still provide e-mail forwarding for .us domain names, though.
Finally, WHOIS privacy was not enabled by default for some accounts opened before March 2004. If this applies to you, you can use your account management control panel to turn it on.
If you are extremely concerned about the privacy of your personal information, you may wish to use a post office box address or other non-revealing information, such as a work address and phone number, to make sure that more personal contact information is never revealed under any circumstances.
(We do require that you provide us with valid contact information so we can forward legal notices and other important messages to you. We also need to be able to contact you if there is a problem with your account. Please do not provide us with false contact information, or your account may be suspended and your domain name registration canceled.)
Disabling WHOIS privacy protection
Some customers may want their direct contact information displayed in the WHOIS records. For example, some people may be concerned that legal notices sent to their WHOIS contact address could be delayed in the forwarding process.
If you wish to have your direct contact information displayed in the WHOIS records, you can use your account management control panel to do so:
- Login to the account management control panel.
- If your account is a Web hosting account, click Billing and Contact Information (this step is not necessary for "domain name only" accounts).
- Click Update Contact Addresses.
- Scroll down to the section marked WHOIS Privacy Protection.
- Uncheck the checkboxes to disable privacy protection.
- Click Save Settings.