It’s a service that provides your domain with advanced security and protection by locking domain management features under a unique password.

It’s important to make a copy of this password and stored it safely as we do not keep a copy of it on our database. This means that only you are able to make changes to your domain such as contact updates, cancellations or transfers, which protects your domain from theft, hijacking and even honest mistakes such as accidental deletions.

Domain Ownership Protection also comes with free WHOIS domain privacy protection included, which ensures that your personal information is private and hidden from the registry and the WHOIS database.

This can be done directly through your 123 Reg Control Panel.

Simply select the domain name you wish to protect within the ‘Manage active products’ section and click Manage. You will then be taken to the Management page for your chosen domain. From there, select the option ‘Buy Domain Ownership Protection’ and then follow the on-screen instructions to complete the checkout process

No, although it is something that any aspiring entrepreneur or business owner should strongly consider.

If you’re not sure whether domain privacy protection is worth it, remember that cybercrime and hacking attempts have increased by up to 600% over the past few years. By having privacy protection in place for your domain, your details won’t be made publicly available on the WHOIS database, making it harder for any malicious hackers to target you.

The service is available for all the most popular extensions such as .com, .net, .co.uk, .org, .info, .me and .co. It also can be used with most other extensions, but there is a small number that cannot yet use this service. Following are the extensions that you cannot use private registration for: .ae, .archi, .asia, .at, .be, .berlin, .co.il, .co.nz,.co.za, .cx, .de, .es, .eu, .fr, .hamburg, .im, .in, .it, .jp, .nl, .pl, .pm, .pro, .ruhr, .us, .vote.

You can purchase Domain Ownership Protection for periods of anywhere between one to ten years.

However, we recommend that you purchase this service for the same, or on a similar, length as the domain you wish to protect. That way, you can renew both the ownership protection package and the domain together.

The Domain Ownership and Privacy Protection service comes with a renewal guarantee, which gives you a renewal redemption period of a year for the domain name you are protecting. This means that should the renewal process fail for any reason – for example – a failed payment, we will renew it on your behalf. This provides you with more time to pay for the renewal and reactivate it.

If you forget your Domain Ownership Protection password or enter it incorrectly five times, the service will be locked. To reset your password and reactivate the service, you will need to download the Password Reset PDF form from your Control Panel and fill in the details.

This will require some personal information we will use to identify you and can take up to seven days to process.

If you decide that you would like to deactivate your Domain Ownership Protection package, you can do so through your Control Panel.

You will need to enter your password to confirm you would like to remove Domain Ownership Protection. Please note that once this is done, your domain will no longer benefit from identity protection, theft protection and guaranteed renewal.

If you have some time left on your package and decide that you’d like to reactivate it, you can do so from your Control Panel, where you will be given a new password.

We use a privacy service, contactprivacy.com, to hide your details. To ensure private registration for domain names, the service’s information will be displayed instead of your own details.

You will receive an email so people with legitimate queries about your domain can still get in touch with you. This will forward messages onto your main mail address.

No. There are strict regulations on what information can be displayed. It is important for members of the public to be able to contact you if they have a question. The contactprivacy.com details ensure this is still possible.

Emails sent to the contact address will be forwarded to your email address, so people with legitimate queries about your domain can contact you.

Yes. The service simply protects your privacy and ensures that only you can manage your domain. It does not change who owns your domain name.