Is it possible to somehow identify who owns domains that are registered through a proxy or identity protection service?

I have heard you can send a certified letter to the address and it will be forwarded to the owner of the domain, but I assume the USPS would only return with the address that it was originally sent to?

Does anyone have any experience with this?

Thanks

The Terms of Service / Legal Agreements of said service providers say what ...????

Right now I'm looking at a site registered by eNom, but I was just sort of asking in general. There are quite a few services that do the domains by proxy / anonymous registration. But, eNom's ToS is here but I don't see any section specific to their whois privacy.

http://www.enom.com/terms/idprotect_agreement.asp in this case. The use of generalities in something like this would only confuse the issue.

Has SC ever had to request to identify a person through an anonymously registered domain? If so, do you know if it requires some type of formal request through a lawyer, or just a simple email to an abuse dept?

Thanks for the replies.

Since spamcop is primarily interested in the source IP address of the email, which is completely independant of any WHOIS data attached to a particular domain, it is unlikely that this would come up.

Reading through that particular agreement however, it might be prudent to send reports for spamvertized URLs to at least that provider, as they don't seem to tolerate illegal activities, etc utilizing their service. Of course, it being written in the agreement does not necessarily mean it is enforced, but any grief you can give to the spammers or services that knowingly assist the spammers is usually well worth the effot.

Assuming the real registrant doesn't want to be identified and the protection service wants to drag its feet in protecting its customer, your best bet would probably be a subpoena. If, on the other hand, you can prove malfeasance by the real registrant, the combination protection service / registrar may roll over easily. Then again, IANAL.