Because there are millions of domains on the Internet, somehow, a record must be kept of who owns which sites and how to get ahold of them should you need to. Developed in the early 1970s, the WHOIS directory fulfills this purpose. When you register a web domain, that information goes into the WHOIS database, and is then available to anyone who wants to look for it.
ICANN, the international governing body of domain names, requires every registrar to maintain a publicly available WHOIS database that displays the contact information for every domain. WHOIS records usually contain the name and contact info of the registrant, the name and contact info of the registrar through which the domain was purchased, the dates of registration and expiration, name servers, and the most recent update.
The fact that this information is available adds a level of transparency to the ownership of domains, and it’s really a great idea. But, understandably, some people do not want to disclose their personal information or the fact that they are the owner of a particular site to the entire world. This is where WHOIS Privacy (also known as ID Protection) enters the picture. WHOIS privacy basically includes the registrar’s information in both the registrar and registrant fields. If someone would like to get a hold of the owner of a particular website, they are free to contact the registrar and obtain the contact info that way.
At CanSpace Hosting Solutions, WHOIS Privacy is included free of charge for .ca domains registered to Canadian citizens. WHOIS privacy is enabled by default in this case. If you would like to disable WHOIS privacy (and make your WHOIS information public), you can open a support ticket in our client area.
If you chose the “Corporation” or any other registrant type when registering your domain, WHOIS privacy is not available to you – this is a CIRA policy.
For other TLDs including .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, and others, WHOIS privacy is available for a small fee, and can be purchased during the checkout process.
If you’d like to update your WHOIS settings, log into the client area on our site, and click on Domains. Click on the small arrow and from the dropdown bar, select “Edit Contact Information”. You can select two options.
If you choose “Use existing account contact” the info will be updated with the contact info already specified for this account.
If you select “Specify custom information below”, you can manually set different contact information. If you have several domains, and you’d like to update WHOIS info on all of them, you can also use “Bulk changes”.
Have a question about the WHOIS database and privacy settings? Reach out to us for more info!
