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I own a number of domains. One of these domains I use for my primary email address. Is it stupid to use that primary email address as the email address for the owner of that domain? eg, using [email protected] for the owner of example.com. Do I need to maintain a second email address just for this purpose?

In case I need to explain why it's stupid: I recently transferred a domain between registrars and lost control of it for three days, during which the DNS wasn't resolving. If this had been my primary email domain I wouldn't have been able to receive emails sent to the owner of that domain and it would have been harder to prove that I was the owner.

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  • It's not hard to prove. Your name should be listed as the Admin Contact in the A Record for every domain you own. That A Record Contains not only an email address but a phone number as well. By law your registrar should send you a notice requiring you to update this info every year for each domain.
    – eyoung100
    Commented Sep 18, 2014 at 13:57
  • I cannot speak for countries in Europe or others, but in the U.S. there is absolutely no law that requires anything regarding contact information for a website. Since you are in the UK, I would suggest checking this out.
    – closetnoc
    Commented Sep 18, 2014 at 14:35
  • I'm not sure why you both talk about legalities, I'm interested in it from a technical standpoint. Incidentally how would anyone prove which is your primary email address?
    – Jamie Kitson
    Commented Sep 19, 2014 at 14:28

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Absolutly DO NOT(!) post your personal e-mail address as the contact e-mail for your website. You can should another e-mail address that is completely separate from your personal e-mail address. In fact, do not download it into your personal e-mail folder either. I suggest finding a web based e-mail client you can use that by default, shows the text version of all e-mails and optionally allows for HTML through a link. As well, make sure you are running something like SpamAssassin which will give fair warnings of all e-mails. Generally speaking, these e-mails will be spam and phishing/hacker attempts and of no value. Stay safe.

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If a hacker can access the mailbox for the email address in your whois records, then the hacker can steal you domain name. It is a good idea to use an email account with a unique password and good security.

If your account at your registrar is hacked and your domain is transfered without your authorization, having access to the email address in whois becomes very important. That is why it is a good idea to use an email address from a domain other than the ones in your registrar account. When your domain name is hacked, you still want your registrar to be able to email you.

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