What is WHOIS privacy and should I enable it?

When you register a domain, ICANN requires you to provide contact info — name, address, phone, email. Without privacy, that info is publicly searchable by anyone. WHOIS privacy hides it.

What gets hidden

With privacy on, public WHOIS shows:

Registrant Name:    REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Registrant Email:   contact@whoisprivacy.rivervo.com
Registrant Phone:   REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Registrant Address: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY

The actual data is still on file with the registry (legally required), just not exposed to the public.

What still gets shown

• Domain creation/expiry dates
• Nameservers (what host you're using)
• Registrar (us — Rivervo)
• The domain itself

These are operational data that have to be public.

Why enable it

Spam reduction. Without privacy, your registered email gets ~50 spam messages per week from "we noticed your domain expires soon" scammers and SEO snake oil sellers. With privacy on, that drops to zero — they hit our forwarding address instead, we filter and forward only legitimate mail.

Identity protection. Doxxing, harassment, and stalking are real. Don't put your home address in a public database if you can avoid it.

Competitive scraping. Competitors can scrape WHOIS to find new businesses entering their market. Privacy makes this harder.

GDPR-style data hygiene. Even if not legally required for individuals (depends on registry and ICANN policy), it's good practice.

When to turn it off

Three scenarios:

1. High-trust applications (banks, government, regulated industries) — some users explicitly check WHOIS for legitimacy. Hidden data can hurt trust signals.

2. Some TLD-specific requirements — a few country-code TLDs (.us, .de, .au, .ru) require local presence and don't allow privacy. We disable it automatically when registering these.

3. Domain transfers — when transferring a domain to another registrar, some receiving registrars require WHOIS privacy to be temporarily off so they can verify ownership. Re-enable after transfer.

How to enable / disable at Rivervo

Panel → Domains → [your domain] → Privacy — toggle on/off. Free, takes effect within an hour.

We enable privacy by default for all eligible TLDs at registration, but you can opt out during checkout if you want.

What about emails sent to my privacy address?

Mail to contact@whoisprivacy.rivervo.com (with your domain in the subject) is filtered for spam and forwarded to your real registered email. Roughly 95% gets discarded as spam, 5% reaches you — usually legitimate legal/security notices.