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Anonymous Domain Registration for Protecting Privacy? 56

Posted by Cliff from the keeping-your-personal-details-private dept.
morpheus 2001 asks: "I'm a recent graduate working in a corporate environment. I would to register a domain for a blog, but want to protect my privacy. I would also like keep my employer (and others in my professional circle) from realizing that I am the author by checking the WHOIS for the domain. Under the current ICANN rules, anyone who registers a domain must provide their personal contact information. There are several domain registrars who claim to allow one to register a domain anonymously. They do this by registering in their name, but 'guarantee' the I retain ownership of the domain and can transfer it at any time to another registrar. Has anyone used an anonymous registrar? Did you have any problems retaining ownership? Do you have any recommendations for a reputable registrar? Is this a really stupid idead and bound to cause trouble?"
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Anonymous Domain Registration for Protecting Privacy? More

Anonymous Domain Registration for Protecting Privacy?

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  • Ignor the rules fill it with crap and enjoy your new doamin.
    • The problem with this approach is that you'll never be able to prove that you are the owner of the domain. But if you willing to stick with only one registrar for the life of the domain, and you have an account with the registrar that's separate from the domain, then it might work.

  • Someone else's name... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by KDan ( 90353 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @06:34PM (#5697015) Homepage
    If all you want is to prevent them from tracing it back to you in particular (but don't care about anonymity from legal pursuits, and you aren't going to use that domain to do bad stuff) have you considered simply getting it registered under a friend's name? Anybody you can trust will do, really, and it's a lot more trustworthy than any of these companies that will "register it for you"... (imho)

    Daniel
    • Someone you trust is the best bet, in my opinion. Sure, you could trust the company, but an individual who you have a relationship with is probably more trustworthy.

      Best bets, in decreasing order of trustworthiness: your mother, your attorney, your father, your siblings, your accountant, your friends, your pizza-delivery guy.

      Creating a corporation is not an option, because there's still a paper trail (if you're an officer of the corporation).

      Another poster mentioned using FreeNet, which is cheaper (n

  • Alias... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zbowling ( 597617 ) <zac@zacb[ ]ing.com ['owl' in gap]> on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @06:34PM (#5697017) Homepage Journal
    Under the icann roles you can use an Alias. It all came about when record artists where lossing their screenname alias to squaters. You can use an uncommon alias of your name. Like Mike if you go by Michall. Just something you can prove is you to get a domain back, but not something that people you know to know it is you when they do Whois lookups.

  • I know this is probably not what you really want, but what about Freenet [freenetproject.org]? Freenet might be slow right now, but that's just because you aren't on it ;o)

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @06:38PM (#5697045)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:GoDaddy (Score:3, Informative)

      by TheDarkRogue ( 245521 )
      I Did use their privacy service, It's called Domians By Proxy. You still have full control of it but it shows up with them as the contact info. They will forward messages to you and such including postal mail, but from there they do not respond to anyting for you, thats up to you, but for that just grab a hotmail account or something.
  • I've seen plenty of WHOIS entries what have (obviously) fake contact information. As far as I know most places let you change what goes in the record anyways. I would sign up for a domain, and then edit the contact information and set it to a false name, etc.. if you wish to do so. I'm almost positive you don't need a special registrar to handle that.

  • If you're going to do this . . . (Score:3, Insightful)

    by user no. 590291 ( 590291 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @06:49PM (#5697103)
    . . . make sure the reverse DNS for whatever box your hosting this on doesn't come back with something like yourname.com, as well.

  • Using false information (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alphaseven ( 540122 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @06:54PM (#5697132)
    You could just fill in jibberish. This might give you some hassles if someone tries hijacking your domain, but if it's just a weblog just for a few strangers to look at you might not care. Depends on how important anonimity is to you, if your talking about inside dirt about some major coporation, I'd use blogspot or geocities and only post from internet cafes (freenet if you're really paranoid). If your just bitching occasionally about your boss at the video store then just use some fake whois info.

    Keep in mind whoever you register your domain with still has your billing information. If you say something that's legal but still pisses off a corporation or scientologists or something, they might use the lawsuit trick, where they sue you for libel, forcing the registar to hand over your identity, then they drop the lawsuit.
    • If you fill in the registration using false information, anyone has a right to claim ownership over your domain and there is nothing you can do to prevent it.
    • Which is why it would be nice if most domain handlers had a passworded system. If you gibberize your whois info to avoid spamming, hackers, harassment, etc - but you know the password and the hijacking party doesn't - it should prove fairly well who has ownership.

      Of course, if there's large money involved, your registrar might just hand it over anyways.

  • Did you consider publishing to freenet? (Score:3, Informative)

    by stever00t ( 618001 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @06:59PM (#5697160)
    Did you consider publishing to freenet? I get the feeling that Freenet (www.freenetproject.org) is exactly what you want - it's like the internet, but anonymous, encrypted, distributed, etc. etc. Oh, and it doesn't cost you any money to publish to Freenet.
    • The Freenet would be excellent for this, but the Freenet is effectively only accessable to the (very) few people who are running Freenet nodes.

      Until there's a mainstream non-Java Freenet implementation, Freenet will probably never become terribly popular. The current Freenet implementation sucks down memory like there's no tomorrow (and isn't terribly efficient, for something that's always draining away cycles in the background).
      • Until there's a mainstream non-Java Freenet implementation, Freenet will probably never become terribly popular. The current Freenet implementation sucks down memory like there's no tomorrow...

        Freenet's not exactly lighting the world on fire even in a post-Napster P2P balkanized world. Face the facts: Freenet isn't popular for the very simple reason that you have *no* control over what's on your machine. (Just try explaining your "rights" to the FBI as they haul you off with several gigabytes of kiddie
        • Face the facts: Freenet isn't popular for the very simple reason that you have *no* control over what's on your machine.

          *shrug* I disagree. Any http caching proxy runs into the same thing. It's highly unlikely that either of these folks will run into legal liability.

          Even if getting "caught" were not a risk, a great many of us would never consider being part of Freenet simply because of the likelihood that we would unknowingly promote reprehensible things.

          I suppose that many people probably do feel t
          • *shrug* I disagree. Any http caching proxy runs into the same thing. It's highly unlikely that either of these folks will run into legal liability.

            But there's on big difference: Any traffic crossing *my* cacheing proxy *is* the responsibility of someone on my network. Not so with Freenet.
        • I almost never agree with Alan Dershowitz, but he was right when he pointed out recently, "You have a right to privacy. You have NO right to anonymity."
          You chose a bad time to agree with him, since both of you are now on the opposite side of liberal to the supreme court [wired.com].

          Free speech is meaningless without anonymity.

  • Works for the goatse people. .cx is pretty well known for not requiring real contact info.
  • think about it: anonymous domain registration is a boon to all the spammers out there for the exact same reasons you want the anynomyity -- no real way to trace back to the source of their pollution. i think a different approach is warranted in this case, something like asking your mom to register the domain using her maiden name and giving you a piece of paper saying that you hold all rights to (and responsibilities for) the domain.

  • If the appropriate legal contracts are in place,
    this seems very much like Family or other Trusts
    holding ["at arms length"] shares, et al. on
    behalf of its member(s).

    In Australia, there may be tax advantages for
    those who use trusts.

    Politicians (who might be deemed to have conflicts-
    of-interest, eg when their shares' values may
    change with how the vote goes on some proposed
    legislation) have been known to place these
    shares (or their entire portfolio) into the
    hands of trust managers, to

  • proxy (Score:3, Informative)

    by oobar ( 600154 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @08:11PM (#5697662)
    Domains By Proxy [domainsbyproxy.com] specializes in just this. Ignore all these clowns that tell you to use false info.

  • Subdomains (Score:3, Informative)

    by damiam ( 409504 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @08:31PM (#5697762)
    It's a little less professional, but you could use one of the many DNS redirection services (dyndns.org, for example, offers free and premium services) to give you a yourname.sitename.org address. They generally require only an email address and password.
  • It costs about $25 to register to use a ficticious name. I think this is a great solution, because it protects you from domain hijackers while shielding you from casual snoops.

  • Lawyer (Score:3)

    by mbstone ( 457308 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @11:46PM (#5698806)
    Call your local attorney and make an appointment. He or she will register the domain name and will keep your identity in strictest confidence unless ordered to divulge it by a court -- which is unlikely unless someone wants to sue and/or arrest you.

  • Record nothing you don't want on the 6o'clock news (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Thursday April 10, 2003 @08:00AM (#5700273) Homepage Journal
    One of the best rules of life is:
    Record nothing you wouldn't want on the 6 o'clock news


    If you are going to set up a blog, and you are concerned about your employer finding out about it, then don't do it. You should assume that if they care, they can find out who is behind the blog.

    They can, you know. They just claim that the blog has some DMCA prohibited content, get a takedown notice, go to the ISP, and find out where the wire leads. Even if you host on some East Elbownian server, they can find out who is behind it if they care badly enough.

    You are concerned that your employer might find out. OK, you can do one of two things that can work:
    1. You go to your employer, and tell them what you want to do up front. You inform them that you will be exercising your right of freedom of speech, and that you will not post private company information. You see what they do. If they are such bastards that they will give you grief over this, do you really want to work for them?
    2. You do this anyway, keeping meticulous logs and notes. If your company ever gives you grief over this, you are prepared to fight this out in court.


    But trying to do this anonymously and hoping your boss doesn't find out is a losing proposition.
  • 1) Rent a post office box
    2) come up with a pseudonym
    3) ...
    4) um... profit?

    Seriously, if it's important enough to you to receive dead tree material related to your domain or otherwise establish an address for a domain, come up with some pseudonym and stick a PO box address in there.

  • Chances are, if you use your blog to bitch about your useless daily life, nobody is going to read it anyways.

    But, if you ARE that VAIN... just register underneath one of those big blog sites that will give you a free blog.. Unless you are starting a business, I don't see how a proper domain name all for you is that necessary. I can't count how many people I know who registered "COOL" Domain names that don't use them, and collect dust.

    Christ.. I'm still trying to figure out why this blog bs took off, and w
  • Try http://www.tonic.to, they do not publish your personal information via WHOIS, and do not give out any personal info without a court order.

    w00t.

    From

    http://www.tonic.to/faq.htm?7B00EBB7;;;#16 :
    Does Tonic offer a whois service ?
    Tonic does not maintain a whois database that provides registrant information, as many of our customers consider the public display of this information invasive of their privacy. In fact, we will never sell a mailing list of our customers.

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