Domain privacy is a service offered by a number of domain name registrars. A user buys privacy from the company, who in turn replaces the user's information in the WHOIS with the information of a forwarding service.
Level of anonymity
Personal information is typically collected by these registrars to provide the service. Some registrars take little persuasion to release the so-called 'private' information to the world, requiring only a phone request or a cease and desist letter.
Others, however, handle privacy with more precaution, using measures including hosting domain names offshore and accepting cryptocurrencies for payment so that the registrar has no knowledge of the domain name owner's personal information. It is debatable whether or not this practice is at odds with the domain registration requirement of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
Privacy by default
Note that some top-level domains have privacy caveats:
.al: No information about the owner is disclosed.
.at,.co.at,.or.at: Since May 21, 2010, contact data is hidden by the registrar and must be explicitly made public.
.de: Since May 25, 2018, the German Internet Registration Authority denic put extensive changes into force for the Whois Lookup Service. With a few exceptions, third parties can no longer access domain ownership data.
.eu: If the registrant is a natural person, only the e-mail address is shown in the public whois records unless specified otherwise.
.fi: Individual persons' data is not published, but for companies, associations, etc., data is published.
.fr: By default, individual domain name holders benefit from the restricted publishing of their personal data in the AFNIC public Whois.
.nl: Since January 12, 2010, registrant postal addresses are no longer publicly available.
.ovh: Contact data is hidden by the registrar and must be explicitly made public.
.uk: Nominet, the guardian of UK domain namespace, provide domain privacy tools on their extensions, providing that the registrant is not trading from the domain name. While the home address of the registrant can be hidden, the full name cannot.
.in: Registrants for Indian domain names may not use any proxy or privacy services provided by registrars.
.li and.ch: According to the General Terms & Conditions of SWITCH, the Swiss registry for.ch and.li domains,, "... SWITCH is legally obliged to publish... full name of the holder of the domain name concerned postal address of the place of residence of the holder..."
.it Italian domain names can not keep information private for law.
Implications
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers broadly requires the mailing address, phone number, and e-mail address of those owning or administrating a domain name to be made publicly available through the "WHOIS" directories. However, that policy may enable spammers, direct marketers, identity thieves, or other attackers to use the directory to acquire personal information about those people. Although ICANN has been working to change WHOIS to enable greater privacy, there is a lack of consensus among major stakeholders as to what type of change should be made. However, with the offer of private registration from many registrars, some of the risk has been mitigated, enabling those spammers, direct marketers, identity thieves, and other cyber-criminals to hide behind anonymous domain registrations to make it difficult or impossible for victims to identify those responsible.
Litigation
With "private registration", the service can be the legal owner of the domain. This has occasionally resulted in legal problems. Ownership of a domain name is given by the organization name of the owner contact in the domain's WHOIS record. There are typically four contact positions in a domain's WHOIS record: owner, administrator, billing, and technical. Some registrars will not shield the owner organization name in order to protect the ownership of the domain name. Ownership of domains held by a privacy service was also an issue in the RegisterFly case, in which a registrar effectively ceased operations and then went bankrupt. Customers encountered serious difficulties in regaining control of the domains involved. ICANN has since remedied that situation by requiring all accredited registrars to maintain their customers' contact data in escrow. In the event a registrar loses its accreditation, gTLD domains along with the escrowed contact data will be transferred to another accredited registrar. There have been several lawsuits against Namecheap, Inc. for its role as owner/registrant. and also in Silverstein v. Alivemax, et al. Los Angeles Superior Court Case Number BC480994 although this case was dismissed in May of 2014. Silverstein is well known for his anti-spam and email privacy campaigning, most notably in the case of William Silverstein v Keynetics, Inc., No. 17-15176 - decided in March 2018.
