It's all real, and not too long ago I was making fun of a stranger on the Internet. He whois'd one of my domains and gave me a phone call. I guess it serves me right.
Fun fact: here in Canada if you have fake whois info they can take your .ca domain away!
Crazy brother and crazy family of a girl that wrongly accused me of stalking years ago, because she was trying to "explain" to her boyfriend why she and I were hanging out so much, and that's what she thought up and told her boyfriend.
Things spiraled down from there.
One of the main reasons I became such the misanthropic bastard that I am today.
It's not just about privacy. If you have your real number up there, you'll start getting 5 calls a month from ecommerce and seo experts offering you all kinds of great services for a low low price.
Not forgetting those letters claiming that you have to renew your domain with some iffy company for £100. I wonder how many people fall for those and inadvertently transfer their domain to these scammers?
Missing option: all information is real but my country's privacy laws stop the information from being accessible by anyone who doesn't work for the registry.
Nominet in the UK have a far more enlightened approach - as long as you register as an individual, you can opt to have your info hidden at no extra cost. WHOIS just displays your name and the various technical details such as nameservers; all other details are replaced with a message to the effect that "this registrant is an individual who has opted out of the WHOIS database".
Saves having to use all these pricey WHOIS privacy services. Businesses are still required to put address details up, but you don't have millions of people being obliged to shove their home addresses and phone numbers online.
(I voted "using a privacy service", although that service is simply the Nominet opt-out.)
anyone have a good privacy service they can recommend for .com's ? i'm not sure if they all work in the same manner, but those i've looked at (1and1, godaddy) seem to be registering the domain in THEIR name, then providing you with a contract that states that you're entitled to that domain thru them. Which seems rather sketchy. Am i being paranoid?
You're not paranoid; that sounds like a bad idea. You want to find a service that puts your name as the contact but hides your email and postal address. NetSol does this, although their pricing is 4X the industry standard.
gandi.net has an option to list your name as the owner, but replace all the other information with their own (the mail to the obfuscated address will still be redirected to you).
On the other hand, I don't know what are their legal obligations to ICANN; they may be required to provide your real information on request; you'll have to research this question if it's important.
Anyhow, this obfuscation scheme is the best you will get, without registering the domain to some other person than you (and I would recommender against it).
My information is real. I also have a listed phone number. I'm quite easily findable by Web searching. I have controversial opinions on some issues, and used to be harassed at my home phone number and home address (different from today's address and phone number) a few times in the 1990s as a customer of a commercial online service, before most members of the general public used the Internet. I don't worry about it. I still stand up for what I believe and enjoy learning from people who disagree with me.
P.S. Yes, the information in my Hacker News profile is all genuine, and, yes, I don't mind all of you knowing that information. I sometimes check HN profiles if I want to know a person's basis for knowledge after I read a comment here on HN.
Now that domain proxy agents are being held liable for the actions of the originating registrants... I don't think proxy registrations are going to be a popular offering.
If you are truly concerned. Register an LLC, have it own the domain and get it's mail at some mail receiving station.
That way all the information is correct. But J. Random internet loser who decides to come after you because you said something mean about his living arrangements is going to wind up showing up at a strip mall someplace rather than on your doorstep.
I use a privacy service for many of my domains. This is mostly to avoid spam/junk mail/phone solicitors; I'm not particular worried about people being able to track me down and I have no intention of being anonymous. The privacy service is just convenient and doesn't cost extra with the service I'm using.
Before I used the privacy service I used a P.O. Box for my address. I used my real cell phone number but I never really received any calls because of it, though my P.O. Box did get some junk mail related to domain names.
I recently registered some .us domains and you can't use a privacy service with those, so it currently has my real home address (might get a P.O. Box again). I use my Google Voice phone number which forwards to my cell phone, so at least I have some control if I start getting calls. I'm not concerned about my real name being attached to these sites as I am going to make that info public anyway (when I announced the sites from my personal blog which has my real name).
I have my name on it - but my phone # and address are protected for various mundane legal reasons. So I get to omit them from commercial sites too (well, holding addresses etc. get used).
EDIT: I actually like the idea that people put their real details on the DNS. Were it not for my job I would list it - but it's a bit too risky.
It's surprisingly easy to be your own privacy service. I run my company's "privacy division" (that's in addition to my role as Chief Sunday Afternoon Movie Outing Strategist) and routinely put the domains we manage behind a privacy wall.
Here's one way to do it. I cleared all this with my domain registrar before doing this (who said that this is fine as long as the contact for the domain can be reached) and you should, too.
1. use your company name for the name of the contact
2. use email aliases or catch-alls for the email contact
3. use a free PTSN-to-VoIP number for the phone contact (I recommend Area775.com)
4. use a mail receiving agent (like Earth Class Mail) for the physical address
This may look like a lot of set up and expense, but everything but Earth Class Mail is free.
I had real contact info listed in whois for 15 years. It was rarely used, and those who did had a legit reason for doing so. Email addresses are way more subject to abuse.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 73.6 ms ] threadFun fact: here in Canada if you have fake whois info they can take your .ca domain away!
Things spiraled down from there.
One of the main reasons I became such the misanthropic bastard that I am today.
Saves having to use all these pricey WHOIS privacy services. Businesses are still required to put address details up, but you don't have millions of people being obliged to shove their home addresses and phone numbers online.
(I voted "using a privacy service", although that service is simply the Nominet opt-out.)
On the other hand, I don't know what are their legal obligations to ICANN; they may be required to provide your real information on request; you'll have to research this question if it's important.
Anyhow, this obfuscation scheme is the best you will get, without registering the domain to some other person than you (and I would recommender against it).
P.S. Yes, the information in my Hacker News profile is all genuine, and, yes, I don't mind all of you knowing that information. I sometimes check HN profiles if I want to know a person's basis for knowledge after I read a comment here on HN.
Now that domain proxy agents are being held liable for the actions of the originating registrants... I don't think proxy registrations are going to be a popular offering.
If you are truly concerned. Register an LLC, have it own the domain and get it's mail at some mail receiving station.
That way all the information is correct. But J. Random internet loser who decides to come after you because you said something mean about his living arrangements is going to wind up showing up at a strip mall someplace rather than on your doorstep.
Before I used the privacy service I used a P.O. Box for my address. I used my real cell phone number but I never really received any calls because of it, though my P.O. Box did get some junk mail related to domain names.
I recently registered some .us domains and you can't use a privacy service with those, so it currently has my real home address (might get a P.O. Box again). I use my Google Voice phone number which forwards to my cell phone, so at least I have some control if I start getting calls. I'm not concerned about my real name being attached to these sites as I am going to make that info public anyway (when I announced the sites from my personal blog which has my real name).
EDIT: I actually like the idea that people put their real details on the DNS. Were it not for my job I would list it - but it's a bit too risky.
Here's one way to do it. I cleared all this with my domain registrar before doing this (who said that this is fine as long as the contact for the domain can be reached) and you should, too.
This may look like a lot of set up and expense, but everything but Earth Class Mail is free.