Shielding Domain Registration Info?

occamboy asks: "I'd like to register a new domain, but I'm tired of getting tons of spam (most filtered, but some not) and snail mail whenever I register a new domain. In short, I'd like the domain, but I don't want to announce the details of its owner to the world. I was thinking of using GoDaddy's domain proxy, but the terms are scary: they reserve the right to change the agreement anytime, by posting the new terms on their site, and the buyer automatically agrees to the new terms. What's to prevent them from grabbing my domain name from me, or doing some other nefarious thing? So, is there any good way to anonymously acquire a domain? Should I just register with fake info, use a service ... or what?"

Comments

PO Box

[Arngautr]

I use a PO Box and an email account I can throw away if things get too bad. I think I might try the 'protected' option next time as the price isn't too bad.

Re:PO Box

[svanstrom]

The PO box might not be a bad idea, but if you're outside the US you won't really need that (I get one snailmailspam per owned domain per year nowadays).

You also might want to get yourself a good spamfilter, instead of trying to hide.

Personally I use a combination of procmail (on in and outgoing e-mails) and bogofilter, which has for the past cpl of years (basically since bogofilter was created) stopped more than 99+% of all spam; with less than 1 false positive per month (out of 3'000-5'000 caught spam per month).

Basically I use procmail to catch a number of "I know for sure this isn't spam" (incl. using lists of outgoing message-ids) and "I know for sure this is spam" (incl. honeytraps, never used [random-words]@mydomail.tld which has been sold as real adresses to lots of spammers etc) to have the bayesian filter automatically trained to catch all new forms of spam.

Re:PO Box

[anthony_dipierro]

The PO box might not be a bad idea, but if you're outside the US you won't really need that (I get one snailmailspam per owned domain per year nowadays).

Assuming the only reason you want the PO box is to stop junk mail. Personally I don't want any random slashdotter finding out my address.

godaddy

[Da_Slayer]

Currently I use domain's by proxy via godaddy for my domain names. Yeah the terms are scary and I have also started looking for some place else to go. I got a letter in the mail (actual paper) from another domain company asking me if I want to switch. I personally do not like the idea of people seeing my info and being able to spam me to high heaven on the listed email address.

Honestly if your just a normal site with nothing illegal on it I do not see the need for other peopel to see your personal information.

As for using fake information... I think that the US government is cracking down on this and is passing laws to really kick you in the butt for using false information. Currently this is a lose lose situation.

All a domain registry company needs to be sucessful is to have all information listed for the WHOIS as anonymous and only release it with a court order. Which would have to be hand delivered by an officer of the law. That is just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Changing terms = suicide

[Arngautr]

For GoDaddy changing the terms materially, drastically to steal from/rip off customers would result in commercial suicide. As an online business the one thing they have going for them is the trust of their users and their reputation. They loose this and they loose business, they have a lot of business so the short term gains wouldn't match the long term losses.

Do you know a good registrar?

[Futurepower(R)]

Do you know a good domain registrar? The first step is to find a good registrar. The second step is to solve the domain registration info problem.

My experience with GoDaddy is that the company is very abusive. GoDaddy is always trying to sell something else; there are such a huge number of ads that it interferes with proper operation of their web site. Many of the ads seem to me to try to take advantage of people who don't know much about the Internet.

The GoDaddy web site is, in my opinion, amateurish. There are issues like having a password field with 13 spaces, but actually accepting only 11 characters for a password. (I don't know if they have fixed that since I mentioned it to them.)

It's simply outrageous that a company says they can change the terms of a contract with you without your permission, or even knowing. Legally, that cannot be a contract. A contract only exists if you agree to the terms. You cannot enter into a contract that is so broad that you agree to be bound by any terms in the future.

It's amazing how abusive companies are becoming. They seem to be trying to see who can be the most abusive. Have a look at an Ed Foster column that says that the problem is less in Europe: Anti-Sneakwrap Law is UnAmerican.

I knew a three-year-old who once told me: 1) I can do anything I want. 2) You have no control. This is understandable in a three-year-old, who is merely testing the limits. I don't accept it coming from anyone who is older.

Things are really bad in the U.S. now, it seems. Everything to help powerful people get richer. Nothing to take care of the average person.

--
Bush: Spending money the U.S. doesn't have to try to make his administration look good.

Re:Do you know a good registrar?

[0x0d0a]

Of course, the reason why is fear of liability.

If US legal cases had capped damages, companies wouldn't be so hung up on avoiding the slightest hint of liability, willing to lose customers, even, to avoid the faintest trace.

A friend from Norway once told me that the reason that Norway doesn't have the problems with ridiculous worries over liability that the US does isn't that it's harder to prosecute a case in Norway. It's just that multimillion dollar awards are unheard of. You get restitution, but not scads of money above and beyond.

Cut down on the amount of money floating around in the legal system, and you return sanity to the consumer world.

Re:namecheap!

[golgotha007]

great tip, I just registered thru them.

By the way, namecheap is currently running a special, so the $5 'whoisguard' service is currently free. $8.88 for a domain, whoisguard included.

awesome deal.

Re:Sneakemail it

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as you check your email, of course.

If someone makes ANY complaint against you about your domain or your website, your registrar will typically email you a notification and require a response/action on your part to prevent your domain from being redirected to NULL. If you fail to response, they will assume that your address is fake and then shut down your domain on the basis of false information in your registration.

I had some underage little twit complain about my website. I don't know what their deal was but it was just some random made up complaint. I was really busy and didn't notice the request from dotster to respond. Luckily, I happened to do a whois on my own domain the very day it was being changed and noticed the DNS servers had been changed to 'NULL'.

Now that domain updates occur every 5 minutes, I would probably be completely fucked before I had a chance to act. It would have been terrible, too - I have about 100,000 members and about 500,000 pages served per day. Losing my domain for any period of time would be embarrassing and ruin my reliability.

The problem I have is that there are a lot of crazy people out there and the last thing I want is someone knowing my real phone number, email address and physical address so they can come stalk or harass me if I ban them from my website. Worse, imagine some girl who has been raped and sets up her own website to deal with the aftermath of it. To express herself and discuss her tragedy with other people. Is it fair to make her give her phone number, email address and physical address?!? Hardly! What about children who want to own their own domains?

Why is it so hard to have one set of private records for the registrar and another set for the public and to do it without charging an extra $10/yr per domain?!

Somewhat simple solution

[zangdesign]

Use a real email address at your domain. Since you control it - set it to filter keep only mail from GoDaddy and your hosting company, since your email from those companies will be coming from known sources.

Use a second account as your personal email, but don't publish that address and make it something slightly off-kilter so spammers have a harder time guessing it.

Re:namecheap!

[hookedup]

you have a "Set a new random WhoisGuard email in Whois" option in your account settings.makes accounts like s45nh4k5l2@whoisguard.namecheap.com that point to your real email, it's really quite sweet :)