ICANN Studies Secretive Domain Owners

alphadogg quotes from a Network World piece reporting on ICANN's study of the prevalence of proxy services that shield registrants' personal information from WHOIS queries. "Approximately 15% to 25% of domain names have been registered in a manner that limits the amount of personal information available to the public... according to the preliminary results of a report from ICANN... Domain owners who want to limit the amount of personal information available to the public generally use a privacy [proxy] service. ... [Proxy services] register domain names on behalf of registrants. The main objective of ICANN's study — which was based on a random sample of 2,400 domain names registered under .com, .net, .org, .biz, and .info — is to establish baseline information to inform the ICANN community on how common privacy and proxy services are." Spammers and other miscreants abuse the ability to register domains by proxy, in order to avoid being found; but ordinary users have a legitimate interest in keeping their personal information out of the hands of those same bad actors. What's the right balance?

100% anonymous!

[iYk6]

Nobody yet has mentioned the easiest, most reliable method of registering a domain name anonymously. Just enter fake information in the database. As long as it isn't obviously fake, like Fuck You at Fuck St, Fuck, 11111, it won't get deleted. And you don't have to worry about the proxy company selling it, or accidentally giving it away to hackers.

This of course won't solve the credit card has your name problem, but you can get anonymous debit cards from most grocery stores.

Re:100% anonymous!

[X0563511]

Of course, the email addresses you enter MUST be valid and accessible, lest you ever want to do various things such as transferring domains.

Re:Don't hide.

[dbIII]

I think "Heroes" pointed this situation out quite well when Hiro and Anjo turned up on online stripper Nikki's doorstep after reading the whois information for her domain. You don't always want people to be able to find your physical address.

Re:100% anonymous!

[S.O.B.]

If you've been managing DNS records for over 10 years and you don't know what's meant by "transferring domains" then you really don't know what you're doing and should "transfer" your domains to someone who does.