Companies that sell website addresses (ie domain registrars) have to collect and keep contact details about the person who buys each website-address. These details are like your name, telephone number, email address, and postal address.
By default, your contact details have to be made public. This means that the domain registrar puts them into a database-about-the-internet, and anyone who can access the internet can use a “whois service” (eg https://www.whois.com/whois/ ) to search for your website-address, and see your contact details.
But each domain registrar is allowed to provide a service called domain privacy.
If you buy this service, then when someone looks up your website address in a whois service, they see the domain registrar’s details. If they have technical questions or complaints about your website, they contact the domain registrar, and the domain registrar sends the details to you if necessary.
Some domain registrars provide domain privacy as part of their service. Others provide it few for a few months, and then give you the option of paying for it after that.
If you have domain privacy, then it’s harder for other internet companies to send you spam emails, or for internet-stalkers to find you. But if you are putting your contact details on the website anyway, it might not be worthwhile.
Something to remember if you are putting your contact details on your website.
You may think "I'm happy to have my phone number / email address on the internet for now: if people abuse them, I can take them off later."
But tools like RSS feeds and the Wayback Machine (which keeps a picture of lots of websites - as they were at times in the past), mean that even if you take a detail off your website now, some people can find the previous details.
(adapted from advice I gave to a client recently -)
Examples of what is shown in domain registration if you have a privacy service
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| The first part - compulsory details |
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| The second part - more optional |
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