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 info in the WHOIS with the info of a forwarding service (for email and sometimes postal mail, done by a proxy server) such as "Domains by Proxy, Inc." or eNom's "ID Protect".
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Note some domain extensions have privacy caveats:
Currently the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) broadly requires that the mailing address, phone number and e-mail address of those owning/managing a domain name to be made publicly available through the "WHOIS" directories. However, that policy enables spammers, direct marketers, identity thieves, or other attackers to loot the directory for personal information about these people. Although ICANN has been exploring changing WHOIS to enable greater privacy, there is a lack of consensus among major stakeholders as to what type of change should be made.
With "private registration", the private registration 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.
In a trademark infringement case, a 2009 United States District Court ruling in U.S.A. held that, for domains with "private registration", the privacy service is legally the "owner" of the domain. The privacy service acts as the "cyber-landlord of the Internet real estate", and the domain is "licensed" to the customer of the privacy service.[4]
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.[5] ICANN has since remedied that situation by requiring all accredited registrars 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.