Support Start > Billing and Account Management > Updating Your Contact and Payment Information > WHOIS and WHOIS Privacy

As you may know, it's possible to use the “WHOIS” system to look up a contact postal address, telephone number and email address of any domain name owner.

We strongly dislike this system for privacy reasons. However, like all domain name registration companies, we’re 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
• Limitations of the privacy system
• Disabling WHOIS privacy protection
• WHOIS privacy protection for .us domain names
• WHOIS privacy protection for .uk domain names
• ICANN privacy obligations

Our free WHOIS privacy service

Most domain names registered with Tiger Technologies include free WHOIS privacy protection. This currently includes all domain names except those ending in .us.

For protected domain names, we’ll act as a forwarding service to increase your privacy. The WHOIS information will 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 “Domain Administrator” instead of your personal name.
• 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 email address that ends in "@whois.tigertech.net" instead of your real address. The special address forwards mail to your real email 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 website (if any), and we'll apply our strongest spam filtering to the forwarding email address. We will forward any registered postal mail or phone messages related to legal issues, and our mail servers will forward non-spam email to you.

Although this system enhances your privacy, your rights are still protected:

• Any company/organization name you choose to enter is still shown in the WHOIS records as the domain's legal owner, making your legal rights explicit.
• Legal notices will still reach you.
• Important email such as domain name transfer approval notices will still reach you.
• We still archive your real information with the ICANN escrow program, providing a third party with a true record of your domain name ownership in all cases.

There’s 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. For example, we’re required to release your direct contact information to parties who have a legitimate need to contact you for legal reasons (such as law firms alleging copyright or trademark violations, or for UDRP proceedings). We may also disable the privacy feature if we receive reasonable allegations that you have violated our Terms of Service, or if you fail to provide your direct contact information to another party regarding legal issues.

In addition, WHOIS privacy for postal addresses and phone numbers is not 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 email 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. We’re legally required to suspend domain names if we find any false contact information.)

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:

1. Login to the account management control panel.
2. If your account is a Web hosting account, click Billing and Contact Information (this step is not necessary for "domain name only" accounts).
3. Click Update Contact Addresses.
4. Scroll down to the section marked WHOIS Privacy Protection.
5. Uncheck the checkboxes to disable privacy protection.
6. Click Save Settings.

WHOIS privacy protection for .us domain names

WHOIS privacy for postal addresses and phone numbers is not 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 email forwarding for .us domain names as described above, though.

WHOIS privacy protection for .uk domain names

Nominet, the company that runs the WHOIS service for .uk domain names, has different rules. As of May 22, 2018, they don’t publish any name or contact information unless you contact them and ask them to do so. Because of that, the WHOIS privacy settings for .uk domain names do not currently make a difference to data they display.

ICANN privacy obligations

ICANN, the central organization that regulates domain names, requires that we publish the following: