Domains by Proxy (DBP) is an

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

company started by the founder of

GoDaddy GoDaddy Inc. is an American publicly traded Internet domain registrar and web hosting company headquartered in Tempe, Arizona, and incorporated in Delaware. , GoDaddy has more than 21 million customers and over 6,600 employees worldwide. The ...

Bob Parsons Robert Ralph Parsons (born November 27, 1950) is an American entrepreneur, billionaire, and philanthropist. In 1997, he founded the GoDaddy group of companies, including domain name registrar GoDaddy.com, reseller registrar Wild West Domains, ...

. Domains by Proxy offers domain privacy services through partner domain registrars such as GoDaddy and Wild West Domains. Subscribers list Domains by Proxy as their administrative and technical contacts in the Internet's

WHOIS WHOIS (pronounced as the phrase "who is") is a query and response protocol that is widely used for querying databases that store the registered users or assignees of an Internet resource, such as a domain name, an IP address block or an autonomou ...

database, thereby delegating responsibility for managing unsolicited contacts from third parties and keeping the domains owners' personal information secret. However, the company will release a registrant's personal information in some cases, such as by court orderDomains By Proxy Domain Proxy Agreement
/ref> or for other reasons as deemed appropriate by the company per its Domain Name Proxy Agreement. As of 2014, over 9,850,000 domain names use the Domains by Proxy service.

Political usage

In the run-up to the 2012

United States presidential primaries The presidential primary elections and caucuses held in the various states, the District of Columbia, and territories of the United States form part of the nominating process of candidates for United States presidential elections. The United S ...

, numerous domain names with derogatory expressions have been registered through Domains by Proxy by both Republicans and Democrats. Domains by Proxy have allegedly been a target of the Internet organization

Anonymous Anonymous may refer to: * Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown ** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author * Anony ...

due to perceived malicious business activities including inducements to join their service, claims of privacy that are not fulfilled and the lowering of Google

PageRank PageRank (PR) is an algorithm used by Google Search to rank webpages, web pages in their search engine results. It is named after both the term "web page" and co-founder Larry Page. PageRank is a way of measuring the importance of website pages. A ...

of the sites they link to.

Controversy

Fraudsters

Controversially, Domains By Proxy is also used by a number of organizations that target vulnerable individuals by sending threatening

psychic A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws ...

letters, and fake drug companies. It is also used by fake anti-spyware and anti-malware sites to hide their real ownership of the software that they promote. Advance Fee fraudsters also use Domains By Proxy. On 5 February 2016, the Artists Against 419 database reflected 1124 out of 108684 entries abused the services of Domains By Proxy. This represents a figure of slightly over one percent of the entries.

Privacy

In 2014, Domains by Proxy handed over personal details of a site owner to

Motion Picture Association The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the five major film studios of the United States, as well as the video streaming service Netflix. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Picture Producers and Distribu ...

due to potential copyright infringement despite the website not hosting any copyrighted files.

Footnotes

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External links