Whois Privacy Protection, sometimes also called Privacy or Whois Privacy Protection, is a service that conceals the real contact information of domain name registrants on WHOIS lookup web sites. Without protection, the name, postal address and email account of any domain registrant will be publicly accessible. Supplying fake info during the domain name registration procedure or changing the real details subsequently will just not work, as doing such a thing may result in the domain registrant losing his/her ownership rights. The policies adopted by ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, demand that the WHOIS information must be valid and up to date all the time. The Whois Privacy Protection service was launched by domain registrars as a response to the growing concerns for possible identity theft. If the service is active, the registrar company’s contact info will appear instead of the client’s upon a WHOIS check. Most domain names support the Whois Privacy Protection service, even though there are certain country-code extensions that don’t.
