I just thought I would share this with the forum members/owners. It is cheap and, if you run a small website/company, it can save you a lot of headache. An LLC is a limited liability company. It's not a corporation. The creators of the LLC can slice up the ownership however they wish in the initial setup (even foreigners, to the US...such as a filipino(a), can be an owner). It does not have to be for profit (I haven't made or reported a single penny with my LLC in the 3 years I have had it). An LLC protects the owners from liability of the some of the companies actions (as a general rule, a person can only sue the company for what it is worth and not the owners.) If you register a website under an LLC a person who does a WHOIS search on the site will no longer see a private individual's name with their address (that's pretty scary Larry...and exactly why I'm doing this thread) as the owner or where it is operated from. They will see a cold, non-personal, company name (or you could name your LLC "Happy Rainbows, Bubbles and Unicorns" if you wanted to make it more friendly....and yeah, it's available). From there they would Google the LLC and find absolutely no information on who the owners are. All it gives is the mailing address of the company in the US. So any legal documents would need to be sent via snail mail to the US....and from that point, only US law would apply. If you wanted you can create a webpage for your LLC as I have for, basically, free. (?isaya?om-home I paid 50 bucks to have that site up for 5 years and I used the free website builder on Dynadot to make it. Only took me about 10 minutes last night. Of course it's shite, I only did the home page, and serves no real purpose other than to say it's there and it can be done.) This website claims be able to create a simple LLC in any state for about 99 bucks + state fees. How To Start an LLC - Home I paid around 300-400 bucks for mine but I used an actual legal service to do Visayacom. Here is some more information on LLCs in case anyone is interested. Limited liability company - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Note: I'm not advertising for that "start an LLC" website or for my LLC. My LLC sells absolutely nothing and is worth f'all. Just throwing it out there as my opinion is that some people here need a sh*t shield and an LLC certainly provides that.
GoDaddy will let you add Private Registration for an extra 10 bucks or so a year. Which also AFAIK keeps the owner of the domain's name secret. Do a WHOIS and all you'll get is GoDaddy info
Here is a low priced business that will charge you 50 bucks a year to be your registered agent ...ie lives in the state..and you can get set up as a Delaware LLC through them..starting a $249 setup with a 30 buck discount for the month of August. Something to look at to get a feel for it if nothing else https://www.delawareinc.com/ourservices/compare-international-packages/
Had mine in Indiana for over 3 years and have yet to be charged a yearly fee (maybe it came as part of the package deal I paid for). I used Legal Zoom for the current one I have. A bit more pricey (around 400 I think) but they do a good job of sending you email reminders about any state requirements and have options for cheap legal consults.
But that won't do anything to protect you legally if someone has an actual legitimate legal dispute. The name will come out. It serves it's purpose to keep the crazies away though. I've used it for a previous website that was based in the Philippines.
