Well, personally for me, I use secret registration because I was tired of all the spam I got. Spammers scrape whois data for email addresses. I not trying to hide my identity on the web, I just don't like spam. I'm not some dark evil force.
Cheers, Keith
Well, personally for me, I use secret registration because I was tired of all the spam I got. Spammers scrape whois data for email addresses. I not trying to hide my identity on the web, I just don't like spam. I'm not some dark evil force.
And of course then there's the conventional wisdom that (some) anti-spammers see secret registration as a sign that you are likely a spammer, or otherwise engaged in bad activities.
Anne (who is of course professionally trained as a dark evil force 
)
Anne P. Mitchell,
Attorney at Law
GDPR Compliance Consultant
Author: Section 6 of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (the Federal anti-spam law)
Legislative Consultant
CEO/President, Institute for Social Internet Public Policy
Legal Counsel: The CyberGreen Institute
Legal Counsel: The Earth Law Center
Member, California Bar Association
Member, Cal. Bar Cyberspace Law Committee
Member, Colorado Cyber Committee
Member, Board of Directors, Asilomar Microcomputer Workshop
Ret. Professor of Law, Lincoln Law School of San Jose
Ret. Chair, Asilomar Microcomputer Workshop
What I find interesting is that I didn't get all that much spam from my small collection of domains. Of course, the e-mail addresses associated with those domains is "admin@satchell.net" (and "abuse@satchell.net"). Indeed, abuse is completely ignored by spammers, while admin gets a couple of pieces of Far East spam a week. That's right, a week.
I bought privacy service now, as well as renewal protection. I've lost three domains, and don't want to lose any more.
You must be doing something wrong. 
After registering a new domain name, I get ~10 poorly worded emails trying
to convince me a I need professional web development services. I also get
~15 phone calls over a few weeks from very thick accents and call-center
noise in the background telling me that I need professional web development
services or search engine optimization. There's usually 1 or 2 calls with
the same characteristics telling me that they work for Google and have
noticed a problem with my 'listing' for my new site and I need to have them
correct it for a small fee because that's how Google makes money.
The phone calls don't happen if I use private registration.
-A
SUGGESTION: Initially register with private registration - then change it to regular non-hidden registration a few weeks later or so. (hopefully before putting it into production, especially if used for/with/in emails) I think this will cut down on the majority of those crazy spam phone calls.
I sometimes get those e-mails a few months after registration. So while
your suggestion will cut down a part of it, there will still be a good
chunk left.
And when it comes up for renewal, it gets up again.
Rubens
For example:
http://www.spamresource.com/2010/02/whois-privacy-protect-what-spamfighters.html
(and I concur... although I do understand the frustration about the phone spam, too - I recently registered a dozen domains and I was getting 10+ calls a day for weeks - which I why I recommend starting with a hidden registration - then switching to an unhidden registration some weeks later. This isn't a perfect solution, but it helps since the hit freshly registered domains the hardest.)
That will work for about 2 weeks - until the people who currently run automated
software looking for new registrations to spam fix their software to lurk until
the new registration becomes non-hidden.
I think I have received more e-mails from NANOG about WHOIS-derived SPAM in the past week than I have received actual WHOIS-derived SPAM in the past year.