signup292 wrote:private registration takes care of that issue, free on 1&1
No disrespect intended but this is not a good solution.
You're replacing your identifiers with those of the registrar (or a proxy thereof) so technically they have a stronger claim of ownership than you. I'm not aware of this being challenged in national judicial systems, but it might at some point. Think of it like a title to a car, it is the primary means of claiming ownership. And don't think registrars are beyond stealing and cheating people out of their names, it happens.
The other compelling reason to be wary of this is that you're putting your trust in their data policies. Would you ever get your domain name back if they "lost" or screwed up the mapping between customers and WHOIS data? Do their employees have easy access to your real indentity info? See this
Moniker.com incident involving a rogue employee. These companies have no incentive to really secure this data against hackers and social engineering in general, let alone informal government requests for the info.