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Anonymous Domain Registration for Protecting Privacy?
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?"
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
Carpe Diem
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.
No.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
. . . make sure the reverse DNS for whatever box your hosting this on doesn't come back with something like yourname.com, as well.
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.
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.
Domains By Proxy specializes in just this. Ignore all these clowns that tell you to use false info.
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's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
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.
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:
But trying to do this anonymously and hoping your boss doesn't find out is a losing proposition.
www.eFax.com are spammers
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.
(Score:0, Interesting)