Why is my personal info online?

[froghat]

Why do they publish personal info (whoIs)of the person who registered a domain name? Why is this allowed? I don't like that this info is out there for anybody to see.

[Danny]

Not sure for the exact why but many of the domain registrants will provide you with a "Whois guard" for a small fee which effectively makes the whois information point to the registration company and they protect the information for you, only providing it to genuine third parties for fraud reasons.

[battra]

As a business owner, it shows your credibility as a company. I wouldn't feel comfortable dealing with company whose domain's whois shows 'Mr. Da Great' as the admin :D If the company's website doesn't list their address or phone numbers, you can use whois info to get hold of them.

Technically you *can* key in false data but that's against the rule.

[ahkip]

you can also hide your personal info by turning on the private whois fearture
however, most of the domain registar ask money for the feature

[blueoceanwave]

I was getting a lot of junk mail from companies that scrape this info and want to sell you hosting/site services so I started to mistype my zip code to a zip code that doesn't exist. Now I have no junk mail.

[Tekntoant]

Some registrars offer free private registration if you buy a certain number of items. This is what go daddy is doing right now.

[iowadawg]

When you register domains at namecheap, you get whoisguard free.
Any of my domains, run a whois and you aint going to find out about me, where I live, etc etc.

[ArunK]

You could put a fake mailing address. I know somone who did this. You could also use a PO Box for the mailing address if you don't want to use your real address.

[web10]

Godaddy give you free privacy when you register more than 5 domains i think, or $2/year per domain.