Can people who work at domain name registration companies see what domains consumers search for?

[Ashes]

I want to know if domain name registration companies can see what domain name I want to check is available.

Can they can see what domain name I'm checking the availability on? If I don't buy it in x amount of days, would they purchase it themselves so that I will have to pay more for it when I come back with the money?

Do domain name registration companies encrypt the names of our domain name interests so that their employees cannot see them and so this event could not take place?

[Neil]

Searching for domains has nothing to do with registering a domain name.

Searching is done by search engines such as Google, Bing etc while domain name registrations is a totally different process and is undertaken by domain name registration companies.

Domain name registration companies usually have a facility to check if a domain name is available.