Maintain your domain privacy and prevent your personal information from going public.

When you register a domain with Squarespace or transfer a domain into Squarespace, you're required to provide valid contact information for the domain. This is the domain’s “registration information.” Squarespace prioritizes keeping your registration information private.

This guide explains domain privacy, Whois, and how to disable your domain privacy.

What is Whois?

Whois is an internet protocol that lists information (also known as “records”) about domains. Whois records are used by ICANN, the organization that oversees domain names, for a variety of purposes to keep generic top-level domains (gTLDs) organized and legitimate. The information in a Whois record includes:

• Registration date
• Nameservers
• DNS records
• Domain expiration date
• Registrar organization
• Domain owner contact information

The registrar of a domain, like Tucows or Squarespace, is required to provide access to these records in their respective public lookup services. The term "Whois" is frequently used to refer to both the record and the database containing it.

What is domain privacy?

Many domain registrars offer services called "domain privacy," "Whois protection," or “private registration” that redacts your personal contact information from being displayed in the Whois record. Since these records are public, spam marketers often crawl them for email addresses.

Domain privacy for Squarespace-managed domains

Squarespace includes free domain privacy automatically for most Squarespace-managed domains. No more action is needed to hide your domain ownership information. This feature prevents your personal contact information from being associated with the domain publicly and protects you from unwanted spam.

 Depending on your registrar and/or registry for the TLD, some fields display even when a version of domain privacy is on. In line with ICANN’s policy, by default, for generic top-level domains (gTLDs), Squarespace displays the Registrant Organization, Registrant State/Province, and Registrant Country you provide.

Unavailable TLDs

Each registry sets its own rules for domain owners, so certain top-level domains (TLDs) don't allow domain privacy to be enabled. These include country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) like .fr and .de. To learn more about the Whois privacy setup for your ccTLD, review our guides on the available ccTLDs or contact the national registry for your domain.

Exceptions for some ccTLDs

Whois privacy is available for some ccTLDs through Squarespace. However, disabling Whois privacy on your ccTLD via your domains dashboard doesn’t always guarantee that the personal details associated with your domain will be revealed in public searches.

Squarespace is only a service provider for ccTLDs, meaning we’re held to the policies set by the registrar and the registry that manages the ccTLDs. As a result, if the registrar and registry don’t allow personal information to be made public, your information will remain hidden, despite switching the Whois toggle off in your domains dashboard.

Whois contact form

If your domain registrar is Squarespace Domains LLC or Squarespace Domains II LLC, a link to a contact form will show in the registrant email field. This link appears when you've enabled domain privacy. Offering this feature is an ICANN contractual requirement in order for us offer the ability to enable domain privacy.

This contact form form allows third-parties and individuals to contact domain owners to inquire about the domain. This is often used when someone wants to purchase the domain from the owner.

Enable or disable domain privacy

If your domain is required to show contact information, you can turn off domain privacy for most Squarespace-managed domains. 

1. Open your domains dashboard.
2. Click the domain you want to lock or unlock.
3. Switch the Whois Privacy toggle on or off.

After you disable domain privacy, your contact information displays in the Whois record. What information shows depends on your registrar:

• If your registrar is Squarespace Domains LLC or Squarespace Domains II LLC, the organization (if one is provided), country, and state show.
• If your registrar is Tucows, your country and state or province show.

Report inaccurate or incorrect Whois contact information 

Domain owners are required to keep their Whois records up-to-date. Use our Whois contact report form to report inaccurate, outdated, or intentionally false domain contact details.