I have been using Gandi as my preferred register for some years now. They have probably the most customer-friendly AUP out there, are reliable, and good decent folks. I have liked everything about them.

Except the fact that they don’t have whois privacy. But now they do! Woohoo! They did have whois spam protection all along, but your address and phone number was visible to everyone.

Whois privacy services are something that you have to keep a close eye on. What you want is for your name to still show up in the public whois database, but just nothing else. Some whois privacy services put *their* name there, which means technically they own the domain. I wouldn’t trust that. Gandi is better about it. Your name, their address and phone number.

Of course, you still have to give Gandi your real contact info, and there are some situations in which it will be revealed. But all in all, I am very happy to see them doing this.

I had looked at other registrars that provided whois privacy, and never liked them for various reasons. Many happened to also have quite restrictive terms of service (hello Dynadot), maybe were good people but had restrictive ToS and crappy interface (register4less), etc.

Now I get to stick with Gandi and get the features I want. I’m very happy with that.