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Information for Privacy and Proxy Service Providers, Customers and Third-Party Requesters

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Privacy and proxy service providers offer services that permit customers to register a domain name without publishing the customer's contact information in the Registration Data Directory Service (RDDS), also known as WHOIS.

A Privacy Service allows a customer to register a domain name as the registered domain name holder (meaning that the customer's name appears in the registrant name" field in WHOIS). Alternative, reliable contact information (such as a mail-forwarding email address) is published by the service provider in place of the customer's personal contact information.

A Proxy Service allows a customer to use a domain name without displaying any of the customer's information in WHOIS. The proxy service provider is the registrant of record (the registered domain name holder) and provides alternative, reliable contact information. This service is legally distinct from a privacy service because the proxy service provider is the registered domain name holder (which attaches certain legal rights and responsibilities for a domain). The proxy service provider licenses use of the domain name to the customer via its agreement with the customer.

2013 RAA

The 2013 RAA requires that privacy and proxy service providers that are affiliated with an ICANN-accredited registrar to:

  • Disclose service terms (including pricing), on the provider's website and/or registrar's website and abide by such terms;
  • Publish an abuse/infringement point of contact;
  • Disclose the business contact information on the provider's website and/or registrar's website; and
  • Publish and abide by terms of service and description of procedures on its website and/or registrar's website, such as handling of abuse or trademark infringement reports, communication handling, conditions of ending service, WHOIS data publication conditions, and access to support services.

If you have a complaint regarding any of these items, please submit a Privacy/Proxy Registration Complaint Form.

New ICANN Privacy and Proxy Service Provider Accreditation Program

ICANN is implementing a new accreditation program for privacy and proxy service providers pursuant to policy recommendations [PDF, 1.24 MB] developed through the ICANN multi-stakeholder policy development process. Once this program is fully implemented, ICANN-accredited registrars may not knowingly accept registrations involving a privacy and/or proxy service from an entity that is not accredited by the ICANN organization.

If you would like to submit an inquiry about the Privacy and Proxy Service Provider Accreditation Program, please contact the ICANN Global Support Center.

Quick Links

  • List of ICANN-Accredited Privacy and Proxy Service Providers
  • Privacy and Proxy Service Provider Customer Educational Information

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Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."