Private Registration FAQ

How does Private Registration help reduce spam?

Private Registration periodically changes the email address that is displayed with your Whois information, which is a randomly generated mailbox at Whois Privacy Protection Service, an affiliate of ours.

Crawlers may harvest and sell one address, but it will change and will no longer work for the spammer. On the other hand, people with a legitimate reason to contact you can look up the current email address, and we will forward the email to you.

What if I need to prove ownership of a domain?

You can temporarily disable the Private Registration service. Turn off the service in the YouStart.com site, and then ask the verifying party to confirm whois registration details on our WHOIS lookup. Once complete, you can turn the Private Registration service back on.

What if someone sends something to the Private Registration street address?

The Whois Privacy Protection Service (an affiliate of ours) may either forward mail to you or may fax or email a scanned copy of a page of the communication. The Service may elect to not forward mail which appears to be unsolicited. The Service will not forward mail if it appears to be operating as a general mail forwarding service for a domain.

Why can't I use this service with my .US name?

To comply with directions from the US government, the .us registry has issued the following statement:

"The United States Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration ("NTIA") has recently completed its review of "proxy" or anonymous domain registration services by .us Accredited Registrars. At the conclusion of this review, NTIA directed NeuStar to phase out the offering of such services by Registrars or by any of its partners or resellers and to ensure that complete and accurate WHOIS data is provided for any existing registrations in .us."

Therefore, we do not offer Private Registration or similar services to .US registrations. This policy applies ONLY to .US registrations.