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I was registering a domain for a new site I wanted to create, and the process seemed straightforward enough until I came across this line when it was time to pay:
What’s this indeed. I hovered my mouse over the checkbox, annoyed at the interruption before admitting I didn’t know anything about domain privacy. I opened up a new browser tab for what I thought would be a quick search on what ‘Domain Privacy’ meant and whether I needed it, and instead fell down a rather infuriating rabbit hole.
Protection from whom?
In order to understand why one would need to pay for domain privacy, you’d need to know about the existence of this thing called WHOIS — a database that stores details of domain owners. If you want to check if a domain name exists, who owns it, get in touch with a domain name owner — this is the place to go. All your contact information, including address, phone number and email, is listed. So when the question of Domain Privacy arises, it’s really referring to whether you want your contact details masked on the WHOIS database.
whois was the command typed in the command line back in the day to retrieve domain information.
The short answer of whether one should purchase Domain Privacy is yes if you don’t want anyone accessing your details, or no if you don’t care.
Privacy as a basic right
Then I started to wonder why my information wouldn’t be protected as a default in the first place. Why am I paying for the privilege of not getting spammed or having my identity stolen?
Then I discovered this wasn’t really the case globally. In Europe, for example, the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) — passed into EU law May 2018 — essentially requires companies to protect the personal data of European users. The default assumption with the GDPR is that privacy is a basic human right. It’s not just the EU — purchasing a .ca (Canadian) domain for example, also has privacy by default. Wikipedia lists the domains that come inclusive of protecting your data. I should note that I was trying to register a domain name with a US registration provider — which obviously thinks of user privacy as a luxury.
Now that I knew I didn’t have to pay extra for privacy with certain domains, coupled with the fact that I live in Canada — it seemed appropriate to go with a Canadian domain. GoDaddy has a Canadian site, so I went on there to have a look at what’s involved with registering a domain. Indeed, I did see ‘Basic Privacy Protection’ included in the price. When I went to checkout however, I had another option to pay a wee bit extra for Domain Ownership Protection:
Another surge of irritation. Apparently, if I want protection against ‘domain hijacking and malicious transfer’, that’s an extra $17.
Privacy laws in North America
In Canada, two federal laws exist for the protection of personal information — the Privacy Act (for the public sector) and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (for the private sector). In addition, certain provinces have enacted their own provincial laws to govern consumer data.
In the US, it turns out privacy regulations are burdensome to business owners, and there is no comprehensive model in the US to protect different kinds of data. So you have different rules for protecting say, financial data, medical data or consumer data, which muddies things up a fair bit. California is the lone wolf with a tough Privacy Act that came into effect January 2020.1 According to this law, any Californian can demand to see all the information that a company has saved on them, have that information deleted, or opt out of having their information sold to third parties.
It’s obvious the US is lagging behind Europe when it comes to protecting users, and Canada seems to have stronger privacy laws in place compared to the US.
There’s a lot more to unpack with regards to government and corporate surveillance2, growth of artificial intelligence, technocracy in America — but I’m starting to sound a little manic to my own self, and I’ve gone down enough rabbit holes for today.
Recommended reading/viewing:
Surveillance is a fact of life, so make privacy a human right
Why is America So Far Behind Europe on Digital Privacy?
John Oliver on Government Surveillance
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