Your Personal Information is Not Protected!
Here is an email I received from Register.com, what I believe to be one of the most expensive registration services out there. They warn that ‘Your Personal Information is Not Protected!’ – their goal is for me to buy whois protection.
Most hosting companies offer this free of charge, such as 1and1
Here is the email they sent today:
Your Personal Information is Not Protected!
Protect yourself from spam with Private Domain Registration. Call today.
Dear Jim,
Did you know you can protect your personal information against data miners and spam for only pennies a day? With Private Domain Registration you can unlist your personal contact information, including your name, business address, phone number and email address, from the WHOIS Directory* just like you would unlist your phone number.
PROTECT: Your Website
Sign up for Private Domain Registration today Don’t expose your private contact information on the Internet any longer.
Sign-up today to:
* Limit spam, telemarketing and other unsolicited messages
* Protect yourself from data miners
* Limit your exposure to identity theft
* Keep your valuable information private
Call us to order Private Domain Registration today. Or,
Go Private
Protect your privacy for just $9 a year Thousands of customers have already signed up for Private Domain Registration and you should too. Call us today at 1.877.203.3140 and we’ll make sure all your domains are protected. Our Web Consultants are here 24/7 to take your call.
Thank you for your continued business.
Sincerely,
Sandy Ross
Sandy Ross,
Director, Customer Service
*The WHOIS Directory is a mandatory listing of all registration information for each domain that is registered. Marketers often use WHOIS information for spamming.
*Please do not reply to this email. Replying to this email will not secure your services.*
Outside the U.S. Call
Private Domain Registration is available for .com, .net, .org, .biz, .tv, .cc, .info and .mobi domain names only.
This offer is subject to the terms and conditions of our Services Agreement, located here.
To unsubscribe from Register.com marketing emails, please click here.
Register.com, Inc., 575 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10018. All rights reserved.
Yeah, they change your registrar information so it can’t be viewed. But every domain provider that does it charges as far as I know. Plus your email address and home address plus name is attached to the registrar information for public viewing. Even if you do get it hidden there are other whois services who might have your information cached, so defeating the purpose.
It really doesn’t bother me too much on my domains. The email address attached to it you can contact me through it but I hardly check it. Plus my home address is rural, so good luck on finding me, but if they want to send me junk mail, then do it, lol.
So good idea not using a personal e-mail address and if you got a P.O. Box use it, but check with your registrar first because it might be against the rules.
As far as personal information on those people search sites, good luck at that. There are tons of them, even if you can get it removed, it may reappear sometime in the future.
Our information now days is public domain. All we got is our social security number if in US, the rest is public. So there is not really much we can do, I say just go with the flow. As you can see information is transferred more rapidly now days. Even if I can block my whois information for my domain, they can pull up information from these people searching services like Vaunne said. You can’t pay them all to hide your identity. It is just a waste of time and right now is the impossible.
Maybe local government will step in, even if they do there is still other governments that don’t have to do anything about it and this is the world wide web. Even if we can block US companies from distributing personal information we can not block a country with no law against it.
As you can see where I am going with this, we our powerless in blocking our own personal information, for now we can only go with the flow. No need to spend the cash, it is just worthless to even try to cover your tracks.