.co.uk - no-privacy domain workarounds?

[dojo]

Hey all,

I've not come upon much discussion here yet about domain privacy and have assumed that it's an absolute requirement. I'd be pretty nervous about gamblers, competitors or any of myriad bad 'uns having that kind of access to my personal details & whereabouts. I do have a limited company but it's a whole different brick n mortar business.

I've a great .co.uk domain name picked out but it looks like privacy is a no-no for trading sites on that TLD. I did read one post with a link to a domain registered with 123 - who.is/whois/css-tutorials.co.uk. - so it can be done if you don't make profit. (...by design, not by failure!

The .com is already taken but is parked so I'm not treading on anyone's turf. I'm not going to make an offer, it's not THAT good

I think it would be hard to justify slots and cards on a non commercial site You could hide the site and depending on how off-white your headgear is, you could probably use keyword interception / redirection in some cunning ploy ...if you had the skills or knew a man.

Is there any other, more legitimate workaround? or do you not use.co.uk much?

Thanks

P

[grumble]

I know a company which provides real whois protection. You can buy/register domains without revealing any of your personal information (they don't even want to know your name). However, the price is high: about 90 Euros per .co.uk domain/year.

[tryme1]

123-Reg offers domain privacy at £4.99 per year. WHOIS privacy | Private domain registration from 123-reg

[slotsaff]

A suggestion would be to get a good friend register it for you - that way, no-one will know it's you.

However, you have to trust this person

[baldidiot]

As far as I'm aware you can't have privacy on .uk domains. But you can just 'opt out' as a non-trading individual - guessing that's what you're referring to in your post. If the website isn't going to be attached to your ltd company then technically you could get away with saying it's a 'hobby site' owned by an individual. The chances of anyone contesting it are pretty slim, and if they did you can just claim ignorance and change it.

That's really your only option other than renting a PO box and using that as the contact address - I have one anyway that my Ltd company is registered at so use it for my domains, but it might be a bit of an expensive option if you're just using it to hide your address.

[Vladi]

Just put fake info in. No-one cares.

[CygX1]

Just put fake info in. No-one cares.

That way the domain legally also belongs to the fake holder and not you.

[Vladi]

I am referring only to the publicly readable stuff i.e. the domain contact details that are listed in WHOIS. Any decent registrar allows these to be different from the real registered owner.