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Buying a domain - WHOIS/PTR privacy? (programming.dev)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by anything_but_windows@programming.dev to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Hi!

I have noticed that on my domain when i run whois <domain> it returns a lot of information such as registrar name, abuse contact, creation date... even though i paid extra for "whois privacy." Then i found that for other domains whois returns a paltry amount of information such as "Malformed request." or just repeats the domain name and has "status: UNASSIGNABLE". specifically, one .fail domain and one .it domain. HOWEVER, those minimal whois records for the .it and .fail domains still have valid PTR entries that i can lookup publicly online.

HERE IS THE QUESTION: i want to buy a domain for the sole purpose of having a single A record that points to a corresponding PTR record on the VPS provider. however, i prefer to have the whois record be as minimal as the 2 examples i gave above. how are those whois entries so sparse?

I am doing all this with the goal of hosting a tor exit node. any help is greatly appreciated! have a lovely day!

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[-] EarMaster@lemmy.world 24 points 5 months ago

This is something your domain provider has to offer to you. It is usually a paid service. Not all TLDs allow it though - so depending on your domain ending you might be out of luck. I don't know your intentions, but if you want to evade prosecution because of the traffic going through your TOR node this will not work. Even with whois privacy enabled your provider must disclose your identity to prosecution. Even if they weren't the A record (IP address) of your domain would link the domain to your server and would open another way to identify you through your hosting provider or ISP.

[-] CameronDev@programming.dev 3 points 5 months ago

Cloudflare is free, I thought it was free everywhere.

this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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