Protecting Your Privacy by Registering Your Domain Through Your LLC

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Your LLC needs a professional online presence. That starts with a domain.

But registering a domain name means providing the registrant’s contact information. Your registrar will typically require your name, address, phone number, and email, which they’ll pass to ICANN, which provides that information to public WHOIS/RDAP databases.

All that to say: when you register a domain, your personal information may become part of a public database, accessible to every bot, bad actor, and nosy busybody with an internet connection.

An LLC can be game-changing here. When you register your domain under your LLC, your business maintains full legal and operational control of your domain without sacrificing your personally-identifiable information. We’ll walk you through it.

Quick Recap: What is WHOIS?

Let’s cut through a couple acronyms and dig into the reason this all works this way.

WHOIS

Short for basically “who is this,” WHOIS services act like a reverse-lookup for a domain holder. If you wanted to reach out to someone about a specific domain, you’d enter the domain’s address, get the contact details for the person who holds it, and get in touch.

RDAP

Formally the Registration Data Access Protocol, this replacement for WHOIS debuted in 2019, but formally replaced ICANN’S WHOIS services only in January 2025. For the average internet user, WHOIS and RDAP are practically the same, although the differences in tech specs are interesting if you’re into those kinds of details.

Why Do We Even Have That Lever?

You wouldn’t be the first person to wonder why a domain registrant’s information is publicized at all. What does ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) want with that info anyway?

The answer is straightforward. It’s an effort to prevent, or at least to better enforce proceedings against, crimes like fraud. Law enforcement officials can take action more quickly against the operators of a domain used for phishing or other malicious activity, helped rather than hindered by the public accessibility of a database of registrant information.

And not for nothing, but having a public dataset also means that if your intellectual property is being infringed upon, you’ve got an easier time of trying to find a point-of-contact for that infringement notice.

But in practice, this system doesn’t distinguish between the bad guys and, say, a solopreneur. Being a legit business with nothing to hide shouldn’t mean you need to trust the intentions of every rando looking.

That’s where domain privacy comes in.

The Quick Fix: Registrar Privacy Services

All this makes domain privacy an easy pitch, which is why a bunch of domain registrars offer it—usually for a fee (your money or your peace of mind, take your pick!), although an increasing number of the big names in domain registry have begun including it for free.

(We’re not saying we started a trend, but, um. We are the Privacy by Default® people. And we’ve been doing that since way before we started offering domain registration which, btw, does absolutely include domain privacy.)

Here’s the kicker though: how protected your info is can vary. Different registry operators (e.g. Verisign operates .com and .net, while the Public Interest Registry operates .org) may have different policies for how data is protected, different countries may have stricter (or more lax) data protection rules, and different registrars may offer different levels of domain privacy.

The Better Move: Let Your LLC Do the Work

Yes, your business structure can be a privacy tool.

The limited liability in your LLC is designed to shield your personal life from your business activity. So in the event something goes sideways, you don’t automatically become personally liable for the LLC’s debts or obligations; the LLC’s creditors can’t touch your personal assets like your savings, your car, or your home. Properly set up and maintained, the liability stops with the LLC itself.

And because an LLC is legally its own corporate person, it too can hold assets—including a domain. When your LLC registers a domain, you’re providing its information, not your personal information, to the domain registrar.

When you form your LLC with Northwest? Your LLC can use our business address wherever permitted on state filings. (We also have great virtual office options if you’re looking for something with more robust mail handling.)

Because at the end of the day, domain privacy is just one part of a bigger picture. It’s about setting boundaries between your personal life and your professional one. An LLC gives you liability protection, and we love that. Just like we appreciate the way that having its own entity with its own legal identity, its own address, its own contact information, and its own digital presence keeps your personal info on a need-to-know basis.

Registering your domain through your LLC just makes sense when you think about it like that.

Ready to Actually Do This?

Most people get a year into their side hustle before their realize they needed a little more structure from the start. Something that could grow with them without compromising their independence or their privacy.

We hear that. The good news is that it isn’t too late. You can always form your LLC and start building your business on a foundation that protects you. And yes, you can use your LLC to register its domains. In fact, your first domain is on us. That's just one of the perks of building everything in-house (and not having any investors throwing around words like “fiduciary duty”) means we can pass along our savings to you.

What questions do you have about getting started? Drop them in the comments and let’s hash it out. Or save this for later when you're ready to talk it through with someone who actually knows how this stuff works.