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WhoisGuard Privacy Protection is now free
- _xgw 8y agoIs this because of the new GDPR regulations?
- nisa 8y agoyes.
- Uberphallus 8y agoI bet, I've always paid and just a few minutes ago I got the email, seems like a PR stunt to me.
- stratosgear 8y agoYou bet it is! I was also emailed: At Namecheap, we care about your privacy and are now giving ALL our Namecheap customers FREE WhoisGuard for life, when they register a domain* with us. This important change supports our strong belief in privacy, security, freedom and the equal treatment for all internet users. Suddenly, they care about my privacy, whereas all the previous years they were soliciting subscriptions to their WhoisGuard service with each new registration or renewal order. What a coincidence! And what an unfortunate choice of wording to their existing customers. (Apparently, I was very upset when I got this emailed)
- lexalizer 8y agoExpect the domain renewal price to include this cost in the future.
- eli 8y agoIt doesn't really cost much to provide. I think it was just an easy upsell.
- JumpCrisscross 8y agoPer another comment [1], these free WhoisGuard services do not seem to apply to multiple European TLDs (e.g. .fr). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17178559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17178559
- xedsvg 8y agoYes. It’s a marketing thing. (Someone correct me if i’m wrong) As I know, all domain name sellers should default to privacy (aka Whois guard) due to GDPR.
- joering2 8y agoGreat domain provider i second that. Furthermore for us domains they have customer support directly in usa. Namecheap customer support is outsourced to romania. I dont have anything against it but i rather have my us based domains names looked at by us-personel.
- tcd 8y ago> Because at Namecheap, we care about your privacy protection. Only when we can stop profiting from selling privacy services because of a new law that came into effect a few days ago. I'd have believed them if they did this 2 years ago once GDPR was announced. Already moved my domains from namecheap since they are not the cheapest and didn't offer free whois until now.
- stratosgear 8y agoMind to share what you choose to use?
- baby 8y agoOvh. They also always had this service for free.
- mdasen 8y agoNameSilo is a couple dollars cheaper than Namecheap and include free privacy as well (https://www.namesilo.com/pricing.php https://www.namesilo.com/pricing.php).
- imron 8y agoI second NameSilo.
- PakG1 8y agoYup, happy switcher from Namecheap to NameSilo for a while now.
- slig 8y agoI only read good things about them here on HN, but their website design put me off. It looks like them haven't updated it for a decade. On the "Create new account" page, their captcha is just a table with black/white background colors to create the letters. Never seem something like that before, and it can be trivially bypassed.
- otterpro 8y ago
- chris_overseas 8y agoCan someone explain in more detail why they aren't able why they aren't able to cover certain TLDs (including several falling under GDPR in the EU)? Their FAQ says: "Due to registry restrictions, WhoisGuard cannot be used with .asia, .ca, .cn, .uk, .co.uk, .de, .eu, .in, .id, .me, .uk, .nu, .li, .ch, .fr, .sg, .com.sg, .org.uk, .us, .es, .com.es, .nom.es, .org.es, .com.au, .net.au, .paris, .vote, .voto, .xn--3ds443g, .nyc, or .org.au domains."
- tekstar 8y agoNot sure about the others, but if you do a whois on a .ca domain you will see it already returns a proxy address (Canadian Internet Registration Authority). You have to provide a valid Canadian address to register a .ca, but they'll only give that information to law enforcement.
- AshWills 8y agoThis applies to .co.uk domains too.
- dpwm 8y agoOnly recently -- probably in response to the GDPR. I was showing a non-technical colleague only two weeks ago how doing a whois query on our company's .co.uk domain showed our company address and the individual responsible for registration. I just checked again now and pretty much all the useful info has gone.
- zimbatm 8y agoIt's what it says, for some extensions, whois information is managed by the registry. Namecheap is legally obliged to provide the registrant information to the registry and they publish the whois information. The same restriction also applies to other name registrars like Gandi: https://wiki.gandi.net/en/domains/private-registration https://wiki.gandi.net/en/domains/private-registration
- elahd 8y ago.NYC requires that the owner have a physical presence in New York City. In addition to the standard whois owner/tech/billing/etc contact sections, .NYC requires a "Nexus" contact -- basically, a NYC-based address of either a person or business affiliated with the domain. See http://www.ownit.nyc/faq http://www.ownit.nyc/faq, under "WILL PROXY REGISTRATIONS, SOMETIMES CALLED “DOMAIN PRIVACY” BE ALLOWED ON MY .NYC DOMAIN NAME?" Basically, it's the registrar's policy to prohibit obfuscating the actual domain owner. Resellers like Namecheap have to abide by these policies. I can't speak for EU domains, or for the reasoning behind the .NYC policy.
- keltex 8y agoIt's always been free at google domains. https://domains.google/#/ https://domains.google/#/
- opinionator1 8y agoBut then you'd have to be a customer of Google, which is undesirable for many.
- akerro 8y agoYes, but now it's free in non-Google service, that's a pron for some.
- imron 8y agoIt's always been free at NameSilo (at least as long as I've been a customer, which is several years now).
- gsich 8y agonot available in many countries
- StavrosK 8y agoUgh, leave it to Namecheap to fuck up extremely simple UX. Instead of just giving me a toggle in the domain settings, I have to add WhoisGuard to my cart, once per domain (for the tens of domains I own), then go and select "10 years" in the purchasing screen (and wait for the entire page to reload) once for each domain, and then go through the entire checkout process to pay $0. Why not just let me click a single button, Namecheap? I wish a new registrar would come in with good service and UX and eat every other registrar's lunch. There aren't any registrars that easily let me manage my domains without trying to sell me tons of stuff every time I need to make a simple change. I've switched to Cloudflare for DNS because their UI is no-nonsense, I half wish they just sold me the domain as well.
- s_dev 8y agoI actually switched to Namecheap because the UI/UX design was so much better than my previous registrar: IrishHosting You might be able to see room for improvement but they're better than 90% of the other registrars.
- StavrosK 8y agoYeah, but that's more or less my point: The bar is so low...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- topogios 8y agoMaybe, as a first shot, they decided to favour near-instant implementation over usability by simply setting the price for an existing product to $0 and use the existing checkout flow.
- StavrosK 8y agoMaybe, but it would have been equally as instant to just set all domains as "WhoisGuard purchased until the year 3000" in the database, and much more user-friendly.
- tradesmanhelix 8y agoI just renewed a domain with Namecheap and, based on the price they're now charging, pretty sure the cost of this “free” whois privacy protection is now just built into the cost of their products. Not impressed. Edit: spelling
- tcd 8y agoJan 23rd 2018: $10.87 for .com and $0.99 for whoisguard ($11.86 total) 29th May 2018: $10.98 (+0.11) for .com and 0.18 ICANN'T fee ($11.16 total). So it's $0.71 cheaper without whoisguard. So that margin (increase in .com) probably covers the actual whoisguard cost, the $1 fee was pretty much pure profit.
- alphaoide 8y agoAre those new registrations or renewals? For my same .com: 2017 New registration $10.69 2018 Renewal $12.98
- tradesmanhelix 8y agoYeah, mine was a renewal not a new registration and cost about $12.58. Previous renewals without whoisguard were closer to the prices you mention, which makes it seem to me like all they've done is bake the cost in.
- _wmd 8y agoI trawled for free whois privacy a few years back and found <https://internetbs.net/> https://internetbs.net/>. For a registrar I can't complain, it's cheap and the offer hasn't disappeared. Now all my domains live there.
- giarc 8y agoI register all my domains on Namecheap, they always have a coupon you can use to save a few bucks. https://www.namecheap.com/promos/coupons/ https://www.namecheap.com/promos/coupons/
- kinsomo 8y ago
- zimbatm 8y agoNotice how they don't compare against Gandi which provided the same service for free for a long time already. https://wiki.gandi.net/en/domains/private-registration https://wiki.gandi.net/en/domains/private-registration
- ted0 8y agoGood folks over at Gandi but our prices at Namecheap have always been much more competitive.
- tombrossman 8y agoThey don't mention Gandi because that would be a marketing disaster. Gandi do no advertising, no affiliate/referral links, or anything else shady. You might pay slightly more, but I believe Gandi operate a significantly better service, catering to shrewd users (I don't work there or have any financial interest in the matter, just a happy customer). In fairness, Namecheap seem like a pretty decent second-choice, and most of my ire is reserved for all the 'baby's first domain name' bottom feeders out there.
- timwis 8y agoI've had my whoisguard at namecheap unexpectedly not renew several times, despite my having enabled auto renew, and the domain auto renewing. As a result my info was exposed until I caught it. I've migrated most of my domains to iwantmyname.com. much nicer experience so far. .io domains are really cheap at namecheap though so I haven't migrated them yet :/
- joering2 8y agoNamecheap web design is very poor. They always plaster new feature on the top without deeper implementation. Many times I click a button only to see empty red box missing any obvious error message. Besides I still have fun blocking my ex-employer namecheap account time to time. All you need is provide their username with wrong password 4 times and account is locked. You have to go thru extensive re-verification process. Its hilarious and totally unnecessary in the times of 2FA. Besides namecheap has a long tradition of not standing up for your domain name. If they are pressed by someone offended by your content, they will take down your domain and take over it. That was few posts on Web Warrior I found years ago from terrorized people that made me change all my domains to namesilo.
- wdn 8y agoNamesilo. Cheap and transparent pricing with free WHOIS privacy.
- maltalex 8y agoNever heard of them. How come they're 30-50% cheaper than anyone else? What's the catch?
- jayess 8y agoNothing. I've been using namesilo for years and no problems at all.
- maltalex 8y agoI'm asking because domain registration is a very competitive business, so profit margins should be thin. In such a market a company that sells the exact same product for half the price is pretty unexpected. So is the market not as competitive as it looks, or is there something else going on?
- ausjke 8y agoDreamhost has this since forever for free, along with many others, why is this even a HN post, seems more like a late-arrived commercial ads to me.
- joering2 8y agoTheir table to see how they stand up against competitors is hilarious! So many free privacy providers since ever like Dreamhost, Namesilo, BrandShelter, Marcaria (some TLDs), but yet you look at that table and you think "wow they are the only one". I take it as a deceiving advertising.
- ted0 8y agoGoDaddy still charges more than 2X what we used to charge for WhoisGuard. We have always given away WhoisGuard for the first year of registration and have always been transparent about the renewal charge. However, now it is 100% free. No deception here. Teddy from Namecheap
- jamiek88 8y agoPeople on here could find a dollar and complain that it wasn’t a twenty. I for one am glad of this upgrade and I have dozens of domains, makes a difference.
- ted0 8y agoGlad you are glad :)
- pwned1 8y agoI moved everything to namecheap after they supported the EFF during the SOPA days. Then namecheap decided to get in the censorship business along with cloudflare. All my domains came off namecheap.
- joering2 8y ago
- ploggingdev 8y agoTangent : what happens to the whois guard if I want to transfer a domain between providers (eg- namecheap to google)? I've heard that during the transfer the whois guard has to be disabled. This means that services such as Domain Tools will log the whois data. Is this true? If so, is there any way to transfer a domain between providers while keeping contact details out of the public whois database?
- m_sahaf 8y agoI had to transfer domains once (from WordPress to Namecheap) and the instructions explicitly required disabling the privacy guard. It was only needed for the transfer period, which was about 3 days. I would love to know why the process requires it. Now that this is mentioned, I revisited WordPress' instructions page and it says: "Most domain names registered at WordPress.com have GDPR protection, which means registrant contact information is not visible publicly, regardless of whether or not the domain has Privacy Protection in place. For these domains, disabling privacy will not result in contact info being publicly published."[0] Does this mean the process doesn't really need it but they registrars require it for some odd reason? If they can work it out without disabling privacy feature to comply with GDPR, why can't they do the same for everyone? [0] https://en.support.wordpress.com/move-domain/transfer-domain-registration/ https://en.support.wordpress.com/move-domain/transfer-domain...
- corobo 8y agoIn my experience you can usually pre-enable whois guard equivalents during the checkout process for the transfer. From the Domain Tools point of view the transfer should look like Old Whois Privacy LLP on SomeRegistrar transferred a domain to New Whois Privacy Corp on NewRegistrar
- ve55 8y agoIt's pretty absurd to require users to continually pay you money with threat of revealing all of their personal information publicly if they ever choose to stop paying you. I can't imagine many industries getting away with that except for registrars due to how the whois system has worked historically, but it's basically just extortion, keep paying us or you're doxxed. Whois privacy should be the default everywhere for no additional charge, so I guess this is a change in the right direction.
- corobo 8y agoI realise it's not even in the same ball park really but the US health service works in that way from an outsider's perspective "Keep paying us or die"
- frockington 8y agoThat is how services work. You pay money, you receive a service. If all tax payers in other countries stopped paying money, people would "die"
- corobo 8y agoIndeed, that was my point. The parent couldn't imagine many industries getting away with it, my counter example was insurance - In my comment's example health insurance but it fits most insurance-based services
- 0xfeba 8y agoYou don't die. At least, not from severe trauma. You die eventually from preventable causes due to lack of preventative care. You do get crushing medical debt, though. Which my advice would be to declare bankruptcy and/or not pay it.
- nomercy400 8y agoIf only there were laws in place to protect your privacy. Oh wait.
- voidmain0001 8y agoI really like the proxy domain registration offered by Njalla. https://njal.la/ https://njal.la/ With it, there's no need for hiding from WHOIS.
- ryanlol 8y agohttp://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/text/2017/d2017-2156.html http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/text/2017/d2017... Read this UDRP decision, they found that using Njallas proxy service constitutes bad faith. While this was a terribly misguided decision, UDRP cases rely heavily on precedent, so it'd be tricky to get this reversed. Don't get me wrong though, most of the time njal.la is pretty nice and I have tens of domains with them. I just wouldn't use them for anything very important.
- weinzierl 8y agoI see a lot of comments about how clumsy this solution is and that it doesn’t work for some TLDs. The solution I’m using is MyPrivacy.ca. It’s not a 1:1 replacement for WHOIS privacy but solves the Spam problem very well, it’s easy to set up and it works for all TLDs. It is basically an opt-in email forwarder with a customizable whitelist of common registrars and NICs. So you will never miss an important mail from your registrar while most Spam will never make it through the challenge/response process. It’s completely free and run by the guy behind easydns.ca (Mark Jeftovic).
- metalliqaz 8y agoUgh, I just paid for it a month ago.
- davidkellis 8y agoI had just switched all my domains over to porkbun for this very reason - whois guard wasn't free at namecheap. I think I'll just leave the domains I moved there, and then continue with namecheap going forward. Now I view them as essentially equivalent plus or minus a few pennies per year.
- swlkr 8y agoThis is the first I've heard of porkbun, it looks interesting
- xref 8y agoMoved my domains to Porkbun as well, price is over 30% cheaper than Namecheap for .com renewals ($13 vs $9), privacy is also free, and they've got a real 2FA solution which Namecheap still does not have after all these years, so I'll be sticking with the Pork. It was basically a tossup between Porkbun and Namesilo, so I went with the service with the more modern interface even though I don't interact with it much.
- gbenzzz 8y agoConsidering WHOIS as we know it is going away for awhile, does this even matter?
- mschout 8y agoExactly! Most registrars are already redacting whois output to comply with GDPR. Registrars that aren't doing this for non-EU costomers (e.g.: godaddy) are the exception. The only reason for this is to push sales of their privacy/proxy registration service.
- pasbesoin 8y agoFor years, they've had a standing active "coupon" value that reduces it from $2.99 to $0.99 / year / domain. Unfortunately, you can't apply it to automatic renewals. This finally solves that problem. -- P.S. TO NAMECHEAP (who sometimes surfs HN, IIRC): PLEASE make sure that WhoisGuard is reliably renewed with this change in place. Given the occasional glitches I've seen in your systems in the past, I want to emphasize this. It would be most unfortunate if a glitch exposed contact information: Once out, you can't take it back. It took a long time for me to decide to try/trust autorenew. I'm worried I may now need to go back to manually signing in at each renewal, to make sure nothing has gone sideways.
- JoeDaDude 8y agoI gather free whois privacy is not uncommon from reading comments here. Here is one more free service: https://www.hover.com/whoisprivacy https://www.hover.com/whoisprivacy
- swlkr 8y agoThis is great to hear, I've been using namecheap for years, now I can save a few bucks on every domain!
- hartator 8y agoWhoisGuard has been free forever at internet.bs with probably the cheapest registration fees on the Internet.
- joelrunyon 8y agoUniregistry.com has had their own version of this. About $2/domain cheaper too I think.
- gymshoes 8y agoThis seems to be a result of GDPR being enforced.