[ssnepenthe]

I've wondered about this for a while now...

I have two .in domains with namecheap and whois data is all "REDACTED FOR PRIVACY" despite namecheap not allowing me to add domain privacy when I purchased the domains.

In fact Namecheap explicitly state that they can't provide privacy services for .in domains on this page: https://www.namecheap.com/security/what-is-domain-privacy-de...

[notpushkin]

I’ve looked into it a bit more, and turns out there are two options for redacting WHOIS data:

- “Privacy service”, which is these funky named LLCs replacing your data in the WHOIS

- Just the redaction, which replaces almost all data with REDACTED FOR PRIVACY (except for registrant's country, state, and organization name).

No idea why or how any of this works! Apparently, Porkbun does both: on my another domain, aedge.dev, it shows REDACTED FOR PRIVACY and replaces org name with “Private by Design, LLC”. For notpushk.in, it does show my country (RU... looks like I haven’t updated my address in a while lol) but everything else is redacted, too.

Spaceship on the other hand doesn’t bother and returns only this tiny response:

    Domain Name: lunni.dev
    Registry Domain ID: 4AF9AE073-DEV
    Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.nic.google
    Registrar URL: None
    Updated Date: 2025-03-10T13:01:35Z
    Creation Date: 2022-12-11T02:30:54Z
    Registry Expiry Date: 2025-12-11T02:30:54Z
    Registrar: Spaceship, Inc.
    Registrar IANA ID: 3862
    Registrar Abuse Contact Email: [e-mail]
    Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: [phone]
    Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited
    Name Server: coco.bunny.net
    Name Server: kiki.bunny.net
    DNSSEC: unsigned
    URL of the ICANN Whois Inaccuracy Complaint Form: https://www.icann.org/wicf/
    >>> Last update of WHOIS database: 2025-03-17T17:11:09Z <<<

Edit: or, rather, that’s what whois.nic.google returns for a domain registered in Spaceship.

Porkbun docs on WHOIS privacy options: https://kb.porkbun.com/article/97-new-whois-privacy-settings...