Is it fair to pay for privacy?

[Andy]

I don't like the idea of being blackmailed to pay extra to protect my personal whois information.

This is the only thing I don't like about using godaddy.com as a registrar i.e. they provide a paid option to barricade your whois data.

I don't normally pay up and just accept the spam I get and deal with it. Ideally the spammers would be nuked but I don't know how to request that service.

[donecweb]

That is one of the deciding factors in my switching from GoDaddy to iPower.

[Andy]

I have used iPowerWeb that I think they were called for combined hosting and domain name and I seem to remember that my site got hacked. I used them before because I was an affiliate and like to use the actual services I recommend, so obviously I do not recommend them at this current time. However I transferred out OK. If you search deep on this site you may unearth some threads on this topic. I had some spam javascript inserted into all my pages.

I am still in favor of Godaddy since I like Bob Parsons who runs the company and blogs about the problems in the industry in an effort to improve things. Also, most of my domains are hosted with them without fault.

So now I recommend a split of your domain name from your hosting.

[donecweb]

So now I recommend a split of your domain name from your hosting.

I always do anyway.

[Menard]

So now I recommend a split of your domain name from your hosting.

I normally do that. I use Namecheap as my registrar. Of course, being that I have so many hosts (free) it is much easier to keep the domains with one registrar. I recently signed up for paid hosting and did accept a free domain; after reading their terms to make certain to whom it belongs should I go to another host. The only reason I accepted it was because it was free; if I register any other domains, it will be through my registrar.

[Andy]

The problem with Free domain names that you get with some hosting accounts is that the same company hosts the site and controls the domain name. So you have to get down on your knees and beg them to transfer out or connect another domain name with your site. If you showed obvious disrespect of the admin's dandruf flakes during this process, you could be in trouble.

[Mikey]

I can understand your question of charging for domain privacy. But to be honest with you, it is currently required at the moment that you have to provide accurate information in the whois record so that you can be contacted when needed. If you want this information private, you are using a service which will relay messages to you and is acting as a method of contact for your domain name. Privacy services is a benifit that you do not need to use. If whois privacy is mandantory then yes, it should be free. But since it is not required and is acting as a benifit in some way to you, then some places feel this service should have a small fee.

[donecweb]

One of the things I like about iPower is that they offer privacy of your domain name information for free.

[White Wolf]

I dont thinks it's right to have to pay to keep your info private, so far out of 20 domains only one is private.

I agree to always register you domain at a diffrent place than your host.

Back when I first started working on websites (2003) I purchased a (cookie cutter cgi shopping cart) for $590, they also provided the hosting for $20/month, witch was only ftp to my folder no control panel nothing.

I didn't know anything back then untill I found these forums and,  Denis teaching me on ICQ  one-on-one.  When I dropped them as my host they put up the domain name that I though i owned for sale on a web page, they then sent me a bill for $600 claiming I owed for the remaining months on my contract,  that I don't ever remember signing.
The good news is they were sued for 5.5 million and nolonger in busines 

So I learned the hard way to keep your domain seperate from your hosting account, and I don't see why the registars themselves can't act as a relays to keep your info private. 

[Andy]

The whole domain name business sucks imho. There are lots of unused names and people that want to make good use of a domain name can't.

Maybe do away with domain names altogether and let people's sites have any name they like but the search results as they do now show the most popular sites at the top of the list.

People don't have to have unique names so why do websites. Only the ip address needs to be unique. This could be in the search result alongside the name.

[Mikey]

Well the idea of a domain name was so that people didnt have to memorize IP addresses.  It is easier to remember a domain name mentioned on the radio while your driving than to remember an IP address.

[Andy]

Probably it's best to hide the ip address and just list all the sites with the same name in usual ranking order. Then next to the name have a description e.g. the offical homepage of Walmart. Trademark protection would apply to people trying to clone sites.

This idea would open up a new level of competition to make better sites for particular domain names.

Of course this will never happen since people would strongly resist sharing their domain names even if they don't use the domain names. Also, the value of domain names would drop to nothing.