The Internet's governing body, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), requires that all domain owners associate their domains with current personal (registrant or organization), administrative, technical, and billing contact information. All domain name registrars, such as Melbourne IT and Network Solutions, are required to maintain a database of this information, called WHOIS.

Your domain contact information is legally required to permit quick resolution of technical issues related to your domain and to ensure that trademark and other laws can be enforced. You'll also want to maintain accurate contact information so that you can receive important messages from your registrar, such as renewal notices and domain transfer confirmations (for more on this, read about domain locking).

With Yahoo! Private Domain Registration, however, you can choose not to make this information publicly available in the central WHOIS database. When you sign up for this feature and choose to make your information private, your contact information will be replaced on the public database with contact information for Yahoo!'s domain name registration partner, Melbourne IT. Third parties attempting to contact you about your domain will be able to send their message to Melbourne IT, which will filter and forward appropriate communications. Learn more.

Please note that Yahoo! Private Domain Registration is available with all new Yahoo! domain registrations and certain other domains registered through Yahoo! (find out more about restrictions). If you'd like to activate private registration for a domain you have purchased elsewhere and redelegated for use with your Yahoo! service, please contact your domain registrar and ask about the availability of this feature.

To learn more about how Yahoo! uses your registration and contact information, please see the Yahoo! Privacy Policy and your Yahoo! Terms of Service.