What your domain's public record shows about you

Each domain has a public record. When you register a domain, the registrar collects your contact details: your name, organisation, postal address, email and phone number. That record can be looked up by anyone through the public registration-data lookup (often still called "WHOIS", now formally RDAP).

Who decides what's shown? Not you, and not a single global rule. ICANN's rules don't require your registrar to hide your details, and many registrars — including our upstream registrar — publish them unless a privacy service is applied. A few registries (some country-code extensions, for example) also set their own rules and don't allow privacy at all.

What gets exposed, and why it matters. A public record with your home address and personal email invites spam, scam "domain renewal" letters, sales calls, and worse. Small businesses and people running personal projects are hit hardest, because their contact details are usually their home ones.

What FogMonkey does. On every extension where privacy is available, it's included in the price. You don't switch anything on or pay extra. We apply it automatically right after registration, usually within a few minutes. For that short window, before privacy takes effect, your details can appear in the public record. Once it's on, the public record shows privacy-service contact details instead of yours, and you stay the legal owner of the domain.

Find your domain