Is your personal info exposed
in public WHOIS records?

No catch. Basic WHOIS privacy is included free with every domain registered through SylhetHost, on every TLD that supports it (500+). We do not charge extra for masking your contact information — we believe privacy is a baseline right, not a premium upsell. The Pro tier exists only for users who want real-time spam filtering and instant email forwarding instead of the 24-hour batched forwarding in the free tier.

No. WHOIS privacy only affects the contact information shown in WHOIS lookups — it does not touch DNS records, name servers, MX records, or your website's hosting. Your email and website continue to work exactly the same. The only thing that changes is what strangers see when they look up your domain in a WHOIS database.

Your public WHOIS shows a forwarding proxy email (proxy@sylhethost.com) instead of your real inbox. When someone sends mail to that proxy, our gateway inspects it: spam and bot-generated mail are filtered out; genuine human mail is auto-forwarded to your real inbox. On the free tier, forwarding happens in 24-hour batches. On Pro, it's instant with AI-based spam filtering.

Legal notices sent to your proxy email or our abuse@ address are treated as priority and always forwarded to you, usually within hours. ICANN requires us to maintain a working contact channel for legal/abuse matters — privacy does not exempt you from legal obligations, and we will never silently drop a verified legal notice. If you ignore repeated contact attempts, ICANN rules may require us to temporarily suspend privacy to ensure service of process.

It works on 500+ TLDs including .com, .net, .org, .io, .dev, .app, .ai, .co, .info, .biz, .xyz, .online, .store, .tech, .shop, .me, and most country codes. A small number of ccTLDs (notably .bd and a few others) have registry-level restrictions that prevent WHOIS privacy — the BTCL .bd registry publishes owner data directly. For these, we recommend using a business address and a dedicated email rather than personal contact info.

Yes, in two ways: (1) Transfer the domain to SylhetHost — privacy activates automatically and you get a free 1-year extension; or (2) keep your current registrar and just enable whatever privacy service they offer (most major registrars offer a free tier similar to ours). Use the bulk audit tool above to check which of your domains currently expose personal data — then prioritize the exposed ones.

No. GDPR masking is a passive, inconsistent redaction applied by some European registrars since 2018 — it covers email and sometimes name, but often leaves address and country visible, and does not include email forwarding. SylhetHost privacy is an active, deliberate service: all 14 contact fields are replaced with a monitored forwarding proxy. GDPR masking is the floor; our privacy is the ceiling.

Yes — privacy is reversible. From your SylhetHost dashboard, you can disable privacy for any domain with one click. The change propagates to WHOIS records within 24-48 hours. Some legal processes (filing a trademark dispute, transferring to certain registrars, applying for HTTP Strict Transport Security preloading) may require temporary unmasking — you remain in full control of when that happens.

No. Search engines like Google have explicitly stated that WHOIS privacy does not affect rankings. In fact, Google's own search and ad domains use WHOIS privacy. The only edge case is if you're trying to build trust signals by showing a real business identity — in that case, consider using a business address (not personal) in WHOIS rather than disabling privacy entirely.

Privacy stays active through the renewal grace period (typically 30-45 days), so your contact info remains masked even if you forget to renew on time. If the domain enters the redemption period (next 30 days), privacy continues. Once the domain is deleted and released back to the registry for re-registration, privacy ends and the new owner's info (or privacy service) replaces yours.

Three differences: (1) Price — we offer lifetime privacy as a one-time payment, most competitors don't; (2) Local support — our privacy team is based in Sylhet and reachable on Bangla or English via phone, WhatsApp, and live chat, not just ticket queues; (3) Integrated stack — privacy, DNS, SSL, transfer lock, and expiry alerts all live in one dashboard with one bill, no third-party forwarding services to chase down. The underlying ICANN compliance is the same across all providers.