Websites and Your Privacy

I would say that I am a pretty private person. My blog is about as 'out there' as I get. Recently I discovered that my name and contact information (personal e-mail, a former address & cell phone) was out there in the public view and available for anyone to access because I own a url/domain (www.rachaelrabbit.com). I was told by my website provider that there is a public database called 'whois' - this tells anyone who wants to know the current contact information linked to a website/domain name (there are many search engines that access this database - if you want to check your/a url I was referred to this search engine http://www.betterwhois.com/.) For a small fee (of course) I could have this information blocked - but it shocked me to know that my information was/has been so easy to access. I have recently been receiving a huge increase in all sorts of spam - both via e-mail and on my phone - this easily accessed information must explain some of this. I just wanted to post this information in case you have a website and have not had your personal information blocked by your host - perhaps you want to consider doing this too.