Having a domain under the .us TLD once seemed appealing to me for practical reasons: It's short, consistently inexpensive, and hasn't already sold the vast majority of its useful namespace to squatters.

Unfortunately, it forbids WHOIS privacy services, which makes it a privacy and security hazard for personal domains. Pity, that.

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anonu 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There's almost no real privacy online in the US. When I search for my name my phone number and almost every address I've ever lived at it is publicly retrievable - on multiple sites. Even with a private WHOIS I get spam from various companies via my registrar asking to speak to me about making a website.

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rootusrootus 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can get some of the major sources to remove you with a service like Optery [0]. Costs a few bucks, but if you let them work at it a few months you can drop the subscription and the effects will linger for a while before you start finding yourself on public databases again.

I used it myself and I have trouble finding information about myself, even with my inside knowledge. If someone is determined enough you probably can't really hide from them, especially if they have any connections to law enforcement or one of the big data sinks. But you can definitely make it harder for casuals.

[0] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/optery

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ZeWaka 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's worth sitting down for an hour and filing a bunch of information redaction requests.

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EduardoBautista 2 hours ago | parent [-]

There are services that will submit this information to hundreds of sites for you.

I used incogni and it seemed to have a positive result.

https://incogni.com/

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bragr an hour ago | parent [-]

Or if you're in California: https://privacy.ca.gov/drop/

	▲	Barbing 38 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Thank you! How’d you find out about this?

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hungryhobbit 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

From TFA:

Will WHOIS requests leak my address?

Nope. Even though you must supply your address in the registration form, a WHOIS request for your locality domain will only show information about the registrar.

	▲	xahrepap 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This is definitely not true for general .us domains. I registered one a year or two ago. And assuming my normal default Whois privacy was being applied (I clicked through too fast. Wasn’t paying attention) I noticed my mistake after the spam bots started hitting me up for their web design products.
	▲	foresto 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		That was clearly not true for domains directly under .us when I last read their rules, roughly a year ago. I suppose it might be true for .city.state.us subdomains, but those fail my first criterion (they're not short), and are themselves a privacy hazard since they substantially narrow the search space for personal info about the domain owner. So it doesn't refute my criticism.
	▲	lftl 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Hrmm... I just tried this from my personal .us domain I've had for 23 years and it shows all my info.

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yieldcrv 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

you can literally write anything in the whois though

registrars have forwarded me ICANN notices about having info verification for 10 years and nothing happened

nothingburger

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foresto 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Good luck in your gamble.

	▲	righthand an hour ago \| parent [-]
		ICE getting 4th jobs enforcing WHOIS registration data soon.