ICANN Enforces WHOIS to Display Webmaster Contact Info for New Domains

When a domain is formed, the person or company buying it is legally required to engage the ICANN and submit all manner of personally identifying information in order to complete the registration process. The law requires the ICANN to include this information in a database officially named "WHOIS," and this information will be publicly displayed by default. The owners of business start-ups can be quite unpleasantly surprised to find that certain sensitive elements of their submitted contact information such as phone numbers and addresses will be exposed rather prominently as part of the process of creating a domain for a website. This is in stark contrast to the privacy and security one normally expects when creating an account on another website as a user or customer.

The more degenerate corners of Internet society are always willing to latch onto whatever vulnerable pieces of identifying information they may come across and torment the individuals that information connects them to. Because of the WHOIS database's mechanics, buying a new domain to launch a website on it can be tantamount to broadcasting one's phone number to the world if one does not know to take the appropriate precautions. The webmaster should contact a privacy provider and elicit its services so that what will be publicly displayed within the database is a different set of contact information provided by that third party on the webmaster's behalf. The registrar behind the domain ending that the webmaster is using determines which among the known privacy providers will be relevantly available to provide its services.

For as long as the webmaster's personal information happens to be listed in the WHOIS database, that information will rapidly and permanently become known across the Internet, so the owner may become persistently exposed to automated spam calls and perhaps worse. Paying for the recommended privacy settings after this harassment begins will not make those personal details disappear from the Internet, so the distress may continue for an indeterminate length of time. Therefore, the owner will have to resort to taking preventive measures such as changing their residence's phone number. For more information click here https://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/dbk009/created_first_ever_website_and_have_been_overcome/.