According to the policies approved by ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the contact info a domain name is registered with must be valid and accurate all the time. At the same time, this info is publicly accessible on WHOIS lookup sites and while this may be OK for companies, it may not be very convenient for individuals, since anybody can see their names and their personal home and email addresses, particularly in an age when identity theft is not that unusual. This is why domain name registrars have launched a service that conceals the details of their customers without changing them. The service is called Whois Privacy Protection. If it’s activated, people will view the details of the domain registrar, not those of the domain owner, if they make a WHOIS search. The Whois Privacy Protection service is supported by all generic TLD extensions, but it is still not possible to hide your personal information with some country-code extensions.