Peter Sunde, the co-founder of Pirate Bay has launched a domain name registration anonymization service. The service is called Njalla and offers protection for customer data and privacy.
Unlike other privacy services, Njalla doesn’t offer ownership by proxy. Instead, Njalla fully own the domain while giving the customer full control over it. The customer can still use the domain but the name is “owned” by Njalla. The service operates as a Tucows reseller via OpenSRS, and supports almost all gTLDs and several ccTLDs. This model, according to them, offers a higher level of privacy protection than anywhere else.
The big difference with other services appears to be that the Njalla don’t want to know anything about its registrants. One can sign up with just an email address or, unusually, an XMPP address. It doesn’t ask for the registrant’s name, home address, or any such details. This means that if Njalla receives a legal request for the user’s identity, it doesn’t have much to hand over.
The legal entity behind this service, 1337 LLC, is based in Saint Kitts & Nevis, because Sunde says the island nation has strong privacy laws.
In its inaugural blog post, the company described itself as below:
Think of us as your friendly drunk (but responsibly so) straw person that takes the blame for your expressions. As long as you keep within the boundaries of reasonable law and you’re not a right-wing extremist, we’re for promoting your freedom of speech, your political weird thinking, your kinky forums and whatever.
Njalla takes it name from a traditional storage hut elevated by poles to keep its contents safe from animals.