alt Hacker NewsHaving 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.
Replies
People running WHOIS against kylesmith.com might discover that it's owned by someone named Kyle Smith.
I'll actually offer my take: domain names under the US TLD are a shared, public good, and no one should be allowed to anonymously own a shared, public good.
Yes, I have a 3 letter .us domain that I’ve had for a while. Hard to get a three letter domain in any other popular TLD.
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.
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
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.