[larrys]

To the OP:

Good idea but you need some contact info on your site and please remove the "whois privacy" from your whois record for the domain.

In all but a limited amount of cases you don't need that. Use a separate gmail account that forwards to your real email to filter if you are worried about spam. Put another address into the whois and google voice number if you are worried about phone calls. To begin you won't get that many with one domain and you also are preventing anyone who wants to get in touch with you from contacting you.

Also, why should someone give you money if you don't even have any info as to who you are that they can trace on your website? (which to repeat I like the idea).

Registrars (I run an ICANN registrar) typically push privacy because it's good for them. I've seen privacy on records with businesses that want the exact opposite.

Anyone who disagrees please post your thoughts and I will address them individually based on my years in this business. (I'd actually like to hear new reasons why people do this that I haven't heard before).

[dkrich]

The timing of this is interesting to me because I recently registered a new domain, opted to leave my contact info public, and have since received an unending barrage of spam emails that I have to attribute to the WHOIS record due to the timing.

I agree about publicly displaying contact info, but would like to know some good suggestions for filtering out the crap that comes with it.

[mindcrime]

I have my contact info publicly available on all of my domains, and I don't see any specific signs that any of the spam I get is directly attributable to that. But I did get an email from a guy in Canada a couple of weeks ago, asking about buying one of my domains, which I sold to him. Personally I think the benefits of having valid whois info outweigh the negatives, but that's just me...

[bonf]

Whois privacy email addresses will forward incoming mails to you as well.

A buying offer can be a smart way to probe the owner behind that privacy wall, who I guess most of the time is just a normal guy/gal...

[larrys]

"Whois privacy email addresses"

A turn off for many buyers. They look like bogus addresses. Makes much more sense to take the effort to get a gmail account that looks legit and use that to filter. Then if you get to much spam simply get another gmail and change the whois. Etc.

[ValentineC]

I'm actually receiving a whole load of spam on one of the email addresses provided by my registrar's whois privacy service. I'm guessing that spammers don't care how ugly an email address looks, as long as they reach someone.

The forwarding thing sounds like a good idea. Not turning off people interested in one of my domain names is an awesome bonus.

[mindcrime]

Interesting.. I didn't realize that, as I've never bothered to pay the extra fee for the "private" registration. But I do use a less-important GMail account for the email contact, so at least my main email doesn't get swamped. But the phone number on there is actually my personal cellphone, which could be annoying if a lot of people started calling, but so far that doesn't seem to happen.

[larrys]

"But it just doesn't happen at the moment."

(Can't reply to this below).

Want to point out though that once the info is slurped and appears elsewhere you won't be able to put the genie back in the bottle.

I many times pull up old info for domains in search.

[mindcrime]

Now that's a fair point. Now that you have me thinking about this, maybe I'll make it a point to change it sooner than later after all. :-)

Edit: Done. Thanks for the nudge, larrys.

[larrys]

"But the phone number on there is actually my personal cellphone"

Use google voice number that forwards to your cellphone. Or better use a google voice number that doesn't go anywhere.

[mindcrime]

Sounds like good advice. I'd invest the time to do that, if I had an actual problem with getting too many unsolicited / spam phone calls. But it just doesn't happen at the moment. If I get bored one day, maybe I'll take the time to switch it over.

[larrys]

"Personally I think the benefits of having valid whois info outweigh the negatives"

Agree with that. As both a domain owner, registrar as well as someone who buys domains. There are definitely cases where privacy is warranted but not for the majority of people.

[larrys]

"I agree about publicly displaying contact info, but would like to know some good suggestions for filtering out the crap that comes with it."

Gmail account which is setup to forward to your regular email account. Or simply change to a new gmail if you get to much spam. I register domains all the time and have a single email account that represents a large quantity of domains. I don't find the spam to be a big problem at all.

[dkrich]

Thanks for the advice- I'll give that a try. I'm kind of pissed that I didn't think to do that in the first place.

[bluefinity]

> Put another address into the whois

If you run an ICANN registrar, you should be aware that ICANN requires whois information to be accurate. Providing incorrect data is grounds for cancellation of your domain name. I guess long as you can still be reached from the address it would be fine though?

Personally, I use whois privacy because I don't want my physical address (and identity) to be publicly available. I had one domain that didn't have privacy years ago, and I kept getting snail-mail spam every year asking me to "renew" it, from some registrar I'd never heard of.

[larrys]

"Providing incorrect data is grounds for cancellation of your domain name."

Not speaking for other registrars of course but what's the chance that we will cancel your domain because there is "inaccurate" info?

In order to do that someone would have to file a complaint with ICANN then ICANN contacts us and we send you an email telling you to fix the info. And we would bend over backwards before cancelling the domain because who wants to deal with how pissed you'd be if we did that? What do we have to gain vs. what do we have to lose.

Do a test. Register a name with, say namecheap or godaddy. Purposely put in bad info (not bogus looking but just wrong). The file an complaint with ICANN. See what happens. (And that's after someone files a complaint how or why would someone care to do that?)

[bonf]

Feel free to contact us at [e-mail] - obviously we missed it when we got the site up.

I think we got the WHOIS privacy by default on NameCheap. We're not hiding from anyone - our names and profiles are linked on the bottom of the page. I would, however, advise domain owners to be wary of information registered, as they may find their home address and phone number propagated all across the web, mirrored by tons of whois/rtld sites, never to be removed again.

[larrys]

"I think we got the WHOIS privacy by default on NameCheap."

Funny how that happens now isn't it? You have to ask yourself why are they so eager to give you that?

"our names and profiles are linked on the bottom of the page"

I was only able to bring up one profile. The rest you have to be connected or logged into linkedin. You have to link in to the linked in public profile. But even then the amount of info is limited unless you pay for the enhanced extra linkedin paid service. Makes much more sense to simply have some info on your site. And certainly not way at the bottom "below" the fold.

"as they may find their home address and phone number propagated all across the web"

That's definitely a valid concern.

My suggestion is simply to use a school address, po box or other contact address. For phone number as mentioned get a google voice number (or another service if you already have google voice.)

While it isn't advised and there are reasons not to do the following I can tell you that if you simply made up an address somewhere that would be fine as well. Nobody is policing that. In theory you could lose your domain but in practice that will never happen.