“Unlock the Secret to Keeping Your Personal Data Safe: Discover the Power of Domain Privacy!”
Free domain lookup tools, which allow anyone to type in a website’s address and receive their full ICANN contact record, also make it easy for any individual to quickly find details on a particular domain holder.
These factors make WHOIS a potential target for data miners and bots, which could put domain owners at risk of:
- Spammers: Automated bots or people using digital tools can scrape WHOIS data, leading to issues like email spam, texts, and robocalls.
- Scammers: Scammers will often use information like your home address and phone number in phishing schemes. Using the information they already have, they will pretend to be one of your legitimate service providers—like your post office or bank—and attempt to get you to share your login credentials.
- Identity theft: Cybercriminals can try to use data from WHOIS to impersonate website owners in fraud schemes, like applying for credit cards or loans.
- Targeted doxxing and harassment: If you run a blog or organization that deals with controversial topics or sensitive issues, critics could use WHOIS lookup tools to find your email and physical addresses, which can lead to forms of harassment.
- Unwanted marketing: While it is technically illegal, companies may scrape WHOIS data or buy scraped domain data to send unsolicited business offers, often in the form of cold calls and ongoing marketing emails.
ICANN faces mounting pressure over the WHOIS database, which many feel opens domain owners to unnecessary privacy risks. New data protection laws, such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), have already made strides in protecting EU domain holder’s information. If you live in the EU or are registered as an EU company, you probably have some default protections automatically enabled by your domain provider.
