A BIG BIG tip for anyone who has their own website... Not many of you realise this but, when you buy your own domain name, the details for who owns it are stored in a WHOIS database along with your name, full address, and phone number. This is accessible by anyone who knows where to look. As a quick example, anyone wanting to see who owns the domain www.alexthompson.com (The mug who spammed his own site on here a few months back) can go to www.joker.com and, if you type 'alexthompson.com' into the WHOIS box at the top, you get the following: If you want this information removed, contact your web hosting provider and tell them you wish to 'opt-out' of the WHOIS database. You can do the same with .co.uk addresses by going to www.nominet.org.uk (the internet authority for UK websites) and using the WHOIS there. I'm only saying this because a quick inspection of mine has revealed they hadn't taken the address off and it was available for the world to see... not a good idea I've asked them to remove my address (and they have), I just thought I'd pass this on to everyone else as a quick inspection of a few of the members websites indicates they haven't done the same (with the exception of nucastle.co.uk.) If you're a business it's OK to leave your address on, as an individual (and in some cases being a prominent DJ) it's not a good idea to leave your home address on the WHOIS. [/geek]
I always opt out of whois stuff like, as you say, I dont fancy my details being publically available.
I'm not going to name names, but I tried a quick flick of most of the websites run by members on here and nearly all of them have their home addresses plastered all over them
11/03/05 22:18:02 whois nucastle.co.uk .uk is a domain of United Kingdom (international dialing code 44) Searches for .uk can be run at http://www.britain.eu.net/naming-co/whois-form.html whois -h whois.nic.uk nucastle.co.uk ... Domain Name: nucastle.co.uk Registrant: Rob Sidebottom Registrant's Address: THE REGISTRANT IS AN INDIVIDUAL WHO HAS ELECTED TO HAVE THEIR ADDRESS OMITTED FROM THE WHOIS DATABASE Registrant's Agent: Pipex Communications Hosting Ltd t/a 123-Reg.co.uk [Tag = 123-REG] URL: http://www.123-reg.co.uk Relevant Dates: Registered on: 11-Oct-2005 Renewal Date: 11-Oct-2007 Last updated: 11-Oct-2005 Registration Status: Registration request being processed Name servers listed in order: ns.123-reg.co.uk 212.67.202.2 ns2.123-reg.co.uk 212.67.203.246 WHOIS database last updated at 22:15:01 03-Nov-2005 -- (c) Nominet UK 1996 - 2005 For further information and terms of use please see http://www.nic.uk/whois Nominet reserves the right to withhold access to this service at any time.
Yeah, but if you ask your webhost nicely they will usually replace your address with their own... Xcalibre did this for me with my last domain
We host all our own stuff + it could make getting ssl certs a right pain if a domain wasn't to an address we have access to.
