What are the drawbacks of using a P.O. box as a contact address for WHOIS records

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I own a couple of domains where I currently have "WHOIS privacy", so my contact info is not revealed in the WHOIS database. I've learned that this arrangement has a significant pitfall, that is, it's the privacy company that really owns the domain, and they license it to me. That seems bad.

I'm not a business, so the only address I can currently list is my home address, which I'm uncomfortable doing.

Therefore, I was thinking about renting a small P.O. box and using that as the address of record. Are there any significant drawbacks of this approach?

One possibility is that people might actually send me snail mail that I need to see, meaning that I might need to actually check the P.O. box instead of ignoring it. Does this happen? (I haven't had any forwarded to me in ~10 years of owning a domain, but that could mean I just haven't caught the attention of folks who would do it.)

Are there other risks or drawbacks?

Best Answer

Here's some advice:

Stop worrying about it.

I'm not sure why, but many people have an unjustified paranoia about things internet related. Your personal information is available to almost anyone via dozens of ways.

Your bank, the gas station, the restaurant you had lunch at, the post office, etc. all have information about you, available to a wide swath of people that you have no idea even have access to the information, that puts you at far greater risk then anything in your WHOIS information.

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