Whois privacy protection also called Whois Guard, it seems like the best thing. No more spam, you are doing business privately on the internet. Well, think again…you are not in an illegal business are you?

The new GDPR rules prohibit it!

Yes, you might be in legal jeopardy given that your business is not showing itself on the internet. Europe and the state of California (that is the US if you were wondering) actually have laws that oblige you to show your contact details in the Whois Page. Now some lawsuits are still going on, but a German court basically ruled that you cannot be anonymously registered on the internet. Surprisingly, many businesses pay the extra $3-$5 a year to be anonymous, which they should not.

You are missing a great marketing opportunity

Now, we don’t really know the SEO impact of giving your whois data to the general public. There is some SEO guru’s that think that turning off privacy guard might help you on your ranking, especially if you are having a new domain. However, there is no evidence, but your site might end up in a range of databases and that might actually be a good SEO thing.

Overall, it will look a lot better if people are finding your company name instead of “Godaddy”. So stop paying Godaddy to get their name on your domain name.

Your fancy EV(Extended Validation) SSL certificate does not support it

So you have decided to go fancy and applied for your EV SSL certificate. Then the CA (certificate authority) gets back to you and suddenly you find yourself in a situation where they tell you that Whois Privacy Protection is not allowed when applying for the certificate.

The EV SSL certificate will give your SEO a definite boost. It is highly recommended and prices are as low as $70 for the year. That is a lot for a startup without the proper funding, but for your cool business, it is not…is it?