Anonymous hosting company?

January 13, 2007 2:36 PM

Can you recommend an anonymous web hosting company?

I would like to register a domain name and set up a web site anonymously. Searching for anonymous web hosting turns up companies such as this, this, and this one. Does anyone have any experience with any anonymous web hosting companies? Can you recommend any as particularly good or bad?

posted by medusa to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Katz Global is the company I have heard the most buzz about in the past.
posted by zaebiz at 2:41 PM on January 13, 2007

How anonymous is "anonymous"? If you mean "somewhere I can safely post stuff that would otherwise get me tossed into jail" then there is no such thing. A lot of places will keep your identity confidential, but in the face of court orders, they'll reveal your contact information to proper authorities.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 2:48 PM on January 13, 2007

zaebiz: Any more details about that buzz?
posted by medusa at 4:52 PM on January 13, 2007

HavenCo would be my first choice assuming you don't need this on the cheap.

They can't be forced into handing over your data because they're a sovereign state called "Sealand". They make their own laws, currency etc. but the whole point is their data center.

In a nutshell, this is for hosting what swiss banks are for your money.
posted by sipher at 5:19 PM on January 13, 2007

Sealand is being sold. (And I don't think the servers are physically located on that gun platform, so I think that their claims are advertising hype.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 5:57 PM on January 13, 2007

Dreamhost offers what they call Domain WHOIS privacy if that is what you seek.
posted by terrapin at 7:18 PM on January 13, 2007

zaebiz: Any more details about that buzz?

It was 4 or 5 years ago now. I was involved with an internet privacy company and the guys there used to hang around cypherpunk groups online and I believe that's where I heard the buzz about it. Cypherpunk's know their game in this area so it might be worthwhile finding a cypherpunk mailing list or website and post a question or check the archives.
posted by zaebiz at 8:59 PM on January 13, 2007

Steven, didn't know about it being on the market but the DC was indeed located inside the platform. It was arguably the most secure DC in the world (even from on-board employees). See Wired for more.
posted by sipher at 6:00 AM on January 14, 2007

sipher: "HavenCo" and Sealand is a huge fucking joke. Seriously. IIRC most of it also burned up in a recent fire.

OP: you're probably just looking for Domains By Proxy.
posted by drstein at 5:39 PM on January 14, 2007