[the-glyphon]

I prefer to hold my domain names anonymously, through a proxy. Now, these days everyone and their dog know how to use WHOIS to find the name of the person who holds the domain and I do not really want my home address and phone number so easily available to the general public.

My question is--if you look up a domain for a small contractor (content & illustration) and find it is held by proxy without personal details--would that cast them in a poor light? I am talking about a work from home situation here so I do not have a business name and address to use--only my own.

[jimberan]

My domain registrar has a free option for hiding the ownership information which I do for all my adsense related websites. For my main sites where I have actually direct business with clients I don't do this as it would look like I am trying to hide something.

[mtajim]

You can always hide your info , if you dont want others to know it , many registrar provide these service and i dont think it gives any bad reputation for the domainer

[randle]

I think you should hide your server proxy when doing business because it lessens the attempt for people to hack into your system.

[SageMother]

I think it depends on your content to some extent. People with adult oriented, xxx sites might want to avoid being discovered for any number of reasons, especially women who are concerned about stalkers, whether they are in the adult business or not. There are are many misogynists out there who vitimize women to enjoy hte power trip.

There are times I have had my domains hidden simply because I could. It was a personal power statement and was meant to weed out people who felt that it was their right to know EVERYTHING about the person they were doing business with. if they felt my not making myself that available to them menat I was hiding something then I didn't want them as a customer anyway. Another reason I have held things private at times is to avoid racists and there are PLENTY of them online. If they couldn't put a name and face to the site it meant they couldn't harass me.

[mtajim]

Hiding your info is goos if you dont want people to use your email addres to spam you , but all those domainers who buy and sell domains wont do these , because that domain is the only source if contact for there customers

[randle]

Thats the problem I use to have, I never knew about the hiding proxy situation so I didn't have control over who got my info. And I would get spammed out the wazoo. And couldn't figure out why.

[mtajim]

But i have so many domain , and all none of them are hidden but i never get any spam mails reagrding them , yes i get other spam mail but never got any for a domain name

[vicki2]

I have one domain name that I didn't hide at first, and I got loads of spam emails because of it. I was actually surprised because it was such a lame name too! LOL.