Phone number exposed, HiYa, nomorobo, what else?

Registered a .us domain, and they don’t have privacy for contact info. My number got out before I realized, now I’m getting a dozen calls a day, where I used to get one a week.
HiYa and Nomorobo aren’t catching them. Is there anything else to be done?

U.S. carriers have started trying to work the problem. But from what I’ve seen of AT&T’s solution, I’m not holding my breath.

Just about everyone I call/text is in my address book. Anytime I start getting hit with more than 1 - 2 calls a week, I turn on:

Do Not Disturb,
Allow Calls from All Contacts,
Repeated Calls OK. (Call backs within 3 min ring)

It’s been stopping the “one ring” calls from Sierra Leone that been hitting my area hard the last couple of weeks.

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“They” meaning whichever registrar you used. The registrar I’ve used for years (decades?), Gandi.net, offers hidden WHOIS data activated by default. They charge $15.50/year for .us domains, and every domain comes with

  • webmail mailboxes with 3GB storage
  • Unlimited aliases and forwarding
  • 1 standard SSL certificate

Many other registrars off WHOIS privacy as well, like Hover. So maybe for starters you’d want to consider transfering your domain to a better registrar.

No, “they” being the NTIA:

To prevent anonymous registrations that do not meet these requirements, in 2005 the National Telecommunications and Information Administration ruled that registrants of .us domains may not secure private domain name registration via anonymizing proxies, and that their contact information must be made public.[17] Registrants are required to provide complete contact information without omissions.[18]

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Wow. Didn’t know about that extreme restriction on .us domains; I don’t know of any other geographically-based domains whose rules obligate a lack of privacy. Helps to explain why you don’t see many of them used, perhaps.

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I thought “us” as in a group of people would be nice, but didn’t consider all the ramifications of declaring oneself “us” as in United States.
The registrar (Whois) should have made it known up front.
I’ve registered the equivalent .org and will attempt to disown the .us name.
In the meantime, all these spam calls. Ugh.

Change the listed number to a burner number. A totally free option that has call-blocking, custom voicemail and spam reporting is Google Voice. I’ve had a GV number for over a decade, since before Google bought the service, then called Grand Central.

GV is one of those services that’s hung on for years without a lot of people really knowing about it. Google let it lay fallow for a few years while they tried pushing Google Hangouts, but it’s still around and even getting iOS update love

I even use a Chrome/Brave GV extension from Google that lets me read/write texts from my GV number.

… and that GV number is the contact number I use in all my domain registrations; of course, since all my user info is obfuscated at gandi.net I don’t get spam calls from my domains…

I feel your pain. I registered a .us domain several years ago.

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