Twilight Zone Moment: You are illegally displaying my personal information!

Twilight zone moments are those situations where a customer asks a question that makes me lose all sense of time, space and reason because it just doesn’t compute and leaves me disoriented for a couple minutes until I realize what the problem is. To be fair, I can have one of these moments from perfectly normal questions if I haven’t had my first cup of coffee in the morning.

This month’s Twilight Zone moment:

Q: I am very angry! You are displaying my personal information for the world to see! What gives you the right to display my personal information like this?

A: Hello. First, I can’t find a record of you being one of our customers. Second, after reviewing the information you sent I see that you visited our site’s “whois” search function. This allows anyone to search for a domain and view details including ownership information. We are not revealing your personal information. This information is available for public viewing through the registrar, the site where you purchased your domain. Visit your registrar and ask about privacy options that will cloak your personal information when a whois search is performed. Let me know if you have any other questions.