I recently dealt with a web design company that offered a deal including your chosen domain name and 1 year's free hosting with their websites. They do this by means of a hosting reseller account. I just discovered that they register the domains in their own name, not their customers name, although nowhere is this stated on their website. My questions are, 1) is this legal, and 2) what is the point of doing this anyway? Many thanks M -
Well, it should actually be on the customers name and address as the account states that you own hosting under them and hence you have the ownership rights. The point of doing this is that, one day if you suddenly leave hosting without paying the cash for it and the value of the domain is not full filled, they'll recover the domain from you and use it or sell it accordingly. If they have their information in the domain, then the company can claim it back. Hopefully, most companies give the domain information to the user after it is registered so that the user can do the needful. At this point the user much reset all the information or else it can lead to problems in future.
Technically it is not illegal because the host registers it with the ICANN registrar so it is registered to the hosts account. However, I do disagree with hosts doing this. Hosts do this to gain more publicity for themselves.