Website anonymity

PDelux

If you setup a website is it possible for joe public to find out who's behind the website(who has it registered or whatever)? Or is it always anonymous?

Bob_Harris

http://www.whois.net/

Where I have bought domains they offer "Whois Proof" which protects your personal details. I think it was $5 for the year.

Tim M-U

PDelux wrote: »

If you setup a website is it possible for joe public to find out who's behind the website(who has it registered or whatever)? Or is it always anonymous?

Yes, It is possible for the public to find out who's behind the website. There are many websites for Whois lookup, some are here: http://who.is , http://iedr.ie/ .

However, It is possible to protect the websites details from going to a whois directory, It can be done with many domain registering websitesm here are some that offer privacy domains (Usually, it costs extra to have this service): http://godaddy.com .

PDelux

thanks all.

BrianD

Technically by law, you are required to put the name and address of the person who owns the web site on your web site. This includes the registration number of the company. Most web sites put this as a line of text across the bottom of the page. You can not run an anonymous web site within the EU.

mneylon

BrianD wrote: »

Technically by law, you are required to put the name and address of the person who owns the web site on your web site. This includes the registration number of the company. Most web sites put this as a line of text across the bottom of the page. You can not run an anonymous web site within the EU.

Um no

The legislation only applies to Limited Companies

BrianD

Yes that is correct. I was assuming that it would be for business purposes.

On a hypothetical basis, I am assuming that the OP wants to put a message into the public domain while remaining anonymous.

As a domain hoster would you be prepared to do this in this day and age?

mneylon

BrianD wrote: »

Yes that is correct. I was assuming that it would be for business purposes.

On a hypothetical basis, I am assuming that the OP wants to put a message into the public domain while remaining anonymous.

As a domain hoster would you be prepared to do this in this day and age?

I don't understand your query

tpotter

Like others have mentioned, by default, all of your user information is usually available, but most Registrars offer some sort of "Whois Protection," which hides your personal info.

I prefer Namecheap, as they have a very affordable "Whois Guard," where sites like GoDaddy charge you around $10 a year extra...

BrianD

Blacknight wrote: »

I don't understand your query

There are only two reasons why you would want anonymity - a genuine one to stop you being spammed and the other is so you can do somthing i.e. post a web site without being identified.

If you're in the realm of public protest online then you should be identifyable. So let's say someone started a "I hate <insert company name>" web site, would you be prepared to host it? It's more a hypothetical question. There's a lot of people who still think that the web is without laws and you have a right to be anonymous.

CoNfOuNd

Some reasons why people might want to use Whois Protection include protection from data mining, identity theft, email harvesting and spam.

Whois Protection doesn't make you above the law. Your real address is still stored at the registry. This is a legal requirement. Providing fake details could get your domain name terminated.

mneylon

CoNfOuNd wrote: »

Whois Protection doesn't make you above the law.
.

CoNfOuNd wrote: »

Your real address is still stored at the registry.
.

No it isn't

Both .com and .net are "thin" registries, so they don't have any registrant data. All that Verisign can see is the domain, its creation and its expiry as well as the nameservers

In the case of "thick" registries, such as biz, info, mobi, org, the registry will only have the information that is displayed in whois. If that information is of a proxy service they have no visibility on the "real" data.

CoNfOuNd wrote: »

This is a legal requirement.
.

No it isn't

CoNfOuNd wrote: »

Providing fake details could get your domain name terminated.

Providing fake WHOIS details is in breach of ICANN policy and in breach of a lot of ccTLD policies

mneylon

BrianD wrote: »

There are only two reasons why you would want anonymity - a genuine one to stop you being spammed and the other is so you can do somthing i.e. post a web site without being identified.

If you're in the realm of public protest online then you should be identifyable. So let's say someone started a "I hate <insert company name>" web site, would you be prepared to host it? It's more a hypothetical question. There's a lot of people who still think that the web is without laws and you have a right to be anonymous.

It's quite a complex issue.

I personally believe that people have a right to freedom of speech, however, like many freedoms that comes with certain rules. Freedom of speech does not give you a right to defame, nor should it be confused with a "right" to infringe intellectual property rights or break any other laws.

Ultimately what tends to happen is that the "injured party" will come after the hosting provider or registrar, as we are quite easy to track down.

So we can easily get a half dozen legal threats per week from various legal firms from Ireland, the US and further afield.

Under EU law (and this is a gross simplification) hosting providers, ISPs and registrars have *some* level of protection as "mere conduit" ie. if we are not aware of content on our network we cannot be expected to take action against it. However, once we are made aware of the content we cannot ignore it. The problem lies in balance.

We cannot, for example, divulge a client's details to a 3rd party without either a court order or a properly formatted request from law enforcement.

CoNfOuNd

I should have said that your real address will still be stored by the proxy service or registration provider, and not the registry. I was trying to keep the reply simple!