Not exactly. I think you've confused a few topics.
Domain registration is effectively a license that must be renewed in one-year increments. When you register a domain name, you submit your information. That includes the name of a person, the name of an organization (if applicable), a valid mailing address, a valid telephone number, and a valid fax number (if applicable).
However, registrars (and third-party domain services) also offer privacy options which hides your whois.
While many people opt to hide whois without thinking, it's not advised. The reason being that whois "privacy" (hiding) is more often abused by online troublemakers -- scammers/fraudsters, illegal operations, conspiracy lunatics, libelous non-factual BS sites, etc. As such one of the most common pieces of advice, when dealing with an online business (especially hosting!) is to see if their whois shows legitimate contact details.
In the case of the hosting industry, lots of teenagers living at home trying to open "hosting companies" while wearing their big-boy pants and pretending to be something they're not -- i.e., experienced, a legitimate business that pays taxes, etc. Virtually all hosts who hide their whois are scams or run by kids/amateurs, and should be avoided.
The one exception to the "don't use a business with hidden whois" rule is sites that have lots of consumer advocacy type content. These are sites that try to balance anti-scam information with concerns for their own safety, both physical and legal. Site owners would then be limited to DDoS attacks only, and not subjected to lazily-filed SLAPP suits, or threats of physical violence by crazies who would come to your home or office. And while many sites would claim this exemption, use your best judgment when determining that a site owner is either justified in his/her concern, or simply full of crap and actually just hiding.
A good site to look up whois is here:
http://whois.domaintools.com
If your whois information is fake, a registrar can nullify your domain license, and confiscate it. Godaddy does this quite often with spammers and counterfeiters from China. However, they're also guilty of confiscating domains from people later proven to be innocent of any wrongdoing. As such, Godaddy is a lousy register that should not be used, as they've proven themselves untrustworthy in the past. Both Godaddy and 1&1 tend to knee-jerk react to situations, and seem to have little regard for the customer.
Use a better registrar like Namecheap or DirectNIC.
Godaddy is also guilty of exploiting a loophole related to domain privacy, which forces you to stay with them. If you want to transfer your domain, you must often unhide the whois. But Godaddy only allows transfers after 60 days have passed since your last whois data update. Therefore you must unhide your whois 61 days in advance (at minimum) in order to transfer. Unfortunately, this is long enough for your whois data to be cached "in the clear" by other sites, meaning you're no longer private/hidden, thus nullifying the entire benefit of maintaining a hidden whois. This slimy policy was against ICANN rules initially, but ICANN has become a Godaddy puppet in recent years, amending rules to allow for bogus Godaddy practices. They claim it's in the interest of consumer protection (not allowing others to steal your domain), but has largely been condemned as nothing more than a cash grab to force you to stay a Godaddy customer.
This last part is likely where the confusion over controlling a domain name, in relation to whois, has come from.
My opinion of Godaddy is best described by this image:
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