dns Unlisted Whois Info

[Frankster]

I want to talk about Whois info associated with domain names. Info below.

I'll state my question first so it won't get lost in the text.
My question is: The description below seems contradictory as to being legal
or not. How can this be legal if it circumvents the legal requirement? Can
someone explain it to me please? Personally, I am all for it, but I don't
understand the legalities involved.

Anyway...
My public DNS hosting site (which I manage via a web interface) has recently
began offering an Unlisted Whois listing. Similar to an unlisted phone
number, this prevents your Whois info from being made public and being
returned on standard Whois queries. They charge $8/mo for this unlisted
Whois service.

Here is their description of the service...

---------------------------
Did you know that current ICANN regulations require that your Private
contact information (WhoIs Info) be included in a publicly accessible
Database?

This means that your private information is displayed and made available to
anyone who wants to see it, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Now you can protect your private WhoIs information by switching your
"public" domain registration to a "private" unlisted registration through ID
Protect.

 

[Steve Duff [MVP]]

1) $8 / mo is way too high

2) Privatized registrations are perfectly legal and quite common, in the same way that a shell corporation registration is legal. In
my view as an cranky old-timer from the ARPANet days, it completely violates the spirit of the Internet. But then so does most of
the nonsense out there. Your choice. For most people its a waste of money - I've had public registrations for years without problem,
I just use a separate e-mail address to list it.

Anyway, there are valid reasons why someone might want to e-mail you regarding your domain, but harvesting of information is very
common and if you're one of the few who still thinks there's any privacy to be bought, shield your registration. Just don't pay
$8/mo to do it.

Steve Duff, MCSE, MVP
Ergodic Systems, Inc.

 

[Frankster]

Thanks Steve. I agree about 8/mo being too expensive. I might have paid 8/yr


Anyway, could you please elaborate on what you mean by "shield your
registration"? How?

Philosophically, I wish the Internet was like the olden days in many ways
too. But it isn't. I suppose there may be many reasons to want to do this.
My personal reason is that I run multiple domains and multiple sites and
multiple email domains off of a single IP (with reverse lookup). I want to
prevent these from all being easily associated with one another. Yes, I
know, with the right amount of sleuthing about anything can be found out
anyway. But why make it too easy

-Frank