Domain Registration: Protect Your Privacy When You Register a Domain Name

Domain Names

World Wide Web. Domain registration is the mandatory first step towards putting a website live on the internet. However, one must remember that it is really important to protect personal information while carrying out domain registration. Likewise protection of domain names is also crucial for ensuring safety from hackers. Hackers can illegally divert all the incoming traffic to their website and can get access to the website owner's personal information and email data, such as contact ids. Therefore, protection of privacy is one of the most important areas to be worked upon while registering a domain.  

Importance of privacy protection in domain registration

As an integral part of domain registration process on the internet, the website owner's personal data including name, contact details and personal email is listed on the public WHOIS database. This means that a website owner's personal information can be easily exploited for wrong purposes. Therefore, the domain registrar provides a paid service called Domain Privacy through which they remove the website owner's information from the WHOIS registry. The domain registrar replaces the contact name and email address of the website owner with details of a forwarding service (for emailing purpose done by a proxy server). At present, several forwarding service providers are active in the market, such as Domains by Proxy, Inc.  and eNom's ID Protect.

Privacy protection through a domain registrar

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the organisation that is behind all domain registration being done on the World Wide Web and regulates the name and number conventions used on the internet. It must be noted that ICANN requires mailing address, contact number and email address of the website's owner to be publicly listed on the WHOIS directories. However, this policy is exploited by spammers, identity thieves, direct marketers, hackers and other individuals for wrong purposes. Therefore, privacy solutions are provided by registrars for mitigating the risks posed by public listing of a domain name owners' information on the WHOIS directory.

The typical set of services offered by a domain name registrar include changing contact details on WHOIS directories, updating name servers, control A and MX records, Privacy Protection and Domain Theft Protection. A domain name registrar also provides bulk tools and an easy to use control panel. Many service providers also offer a service called transfer lock or domain lock, which keeps a domain name safe from unauthorized transfers. Currently, there are several registrars that provide cheap domain names with a privacy option for some basic monthly charge or even free of cost. Therefore, proper market research must be done before finalizing upon a certain domain registration service provider.

Why .com domain is best extension for your online business

Domain Names

There are several reasons why entrepreneurs or companies prefer to buy .com domains.  As per reports, apart from French, German or Spanish internet users, most visitors would point their browsers to a .com extension by default. This is an expectation that has been created by virtue of its popularity. So even if a person knows the domain but not extension, he will mostly try with .com first. A common perception is that the .com domain seems more professional and relevant than others. Therefore, no company would like its business to come across as a cheap one. Additionally, using a .com extension generates less spam than others, as observed by experienced professionals.

How it is beneficial to buy .com domains

Interestingly, the world's leading information search engine, Google, gives a high priority to the .com extension in a domain name. According to the company, these are among the most trusted websites on the internet. Individuals or companies who buy domain name with .com extension are likely to get best results through the process of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Individuals can increase rankings of their websites among top search engines, such as Bing, Google and Yelp, amid others, which will probably facilitate them to make their portals sounder on internet. SEO professionals are aware of the fact that .com domain name extension is most commonly searched by the internet users. In simpler words, using .com makes a website friendly from SEO perspective.

Blogging sites tend to use country specific extensions, or else .me is also used. These are not websites, which are meant to generate business. Similarly, .edu for educational institutions also serves the same purpose. For most media and entertainment purposes, even though it is commercial, .tv is used.

Strategies used by the companies willing to buy domain name

While looking to buy domain name, companies can also consider buying multiple addresses at the same time. However, this is not always a necessary course of action. If the name and ownership of several domain names is common, then this is not important, but the reverse is also true. For example, if .com and .co.uk for a name are both available, it is advisable to purchase both, which would prevent a strong competitor from entering this space. If both the names have been taken, one should not buy .org, unless it is the start of a charitable organisation. Though .net can also be used for businesses, it is generally associated with computer or internet networks. Therefore, the .net extension could convey a wrong meaning for a particular business website.