Domain privacy / WHOIS protection explained

Applies to: All plans (any domain registered or transferred through Maxinodes).

Domain privacy (also called WHOIS protection) hides your personal contact details from the public WHOIS directory and replaces them with a privacy-service proxy. It is managed in your client area under the domain — not in cPanel.

What is WHOIS, and why does privacy matter?

Every registered domain has a WHOIS record: a public directory entry listing the registrant's name, postal address, email and phone number. Anyone can look this up. Domain privacy replaces those personal details with generic proxy details from the privacy service, so spammers, scammers and data brokers cannot harvest your real information.

You stay the legal owner of the domain. Privacy only changes what the public sees — it does not change who controls or owns the domain.

What does domain privacy hide?

When privacy is enabled, the public WHOIS record shows proxy contact details instead of:

Your name and organisation
Your postal address
Your email address
Your phone number

What does it NOT do?

It does not hide everything. The domain name, registrar, creation/expiry dates, nameservers and registration status stay public.
It does not change your DNS or nameservers. Your records (managed in the client area) and your nameservers (ns1.maxinodes.com and ns2.maxinodes.com) are unaffected.
It does not stop legal disclosure. Registries and courts can still require your real details be released where the law demands it.
It is not email hosting. Privacy is unrelated to your mailboxes — at Maxinodes, email is resold Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace (Professional Email), managed separately.

How do I enable domain privacy?

Log in at my.maxinodes.com.
Go to Domains -> My Domains.
Click the domain you want to protect.
Open the domain's management menu and look for Domain Privacy / WHOIS Protection (sometimes shown under an Addons section), then switch privacy on.
Confirm any charge and complete checkout. You can pay by PayPal, card, bank transfer (SEPA) or cryptocurrency.

Result: Within a short time the public WHOIS record for your domain shows the privacy proxy's details instead of yours. You can switch privacy off again from the same screen.

If you cannot see a privacy option for a domain, it usually means that extension (TLD) does not support it — see below.

Which TLDs support domain privacy?

Whether WHOIS privacy is available depends on the extension (TLD), because each registry sets its own rules. Many popular generic extensions support it, while some country-code extensions either restrict it or already anonymise public WHOIS by policy, so no separate privacy add-on applies.

The reliable way to check a specific domain is to open it in Domains -> My Domains in your client area: if privacy is available, you will see the option to enable it. If you are unsure before you buy, start a chat with us with the exact extension and we will confirm.

Does it cost anything?

Pricing depends on the domain extension and is shown on the domain's page in the client area at the point you enable it. Note that domain charges, including privacy, are generally non-refundable once applied.