I have heard of some registrar's just handing over information with a simple phone call from any Joe Blow, even when the site was under privacy protection.

I know if a registrar were subpoenaed or forced to hand over information legally, there is no guarding against that, but I do not plan on doing something illegal.

However, I do not want a registrar giving my information away to spammers and unsolicited contacts.

I never heard of any register that does that. Usually you do a complaint and the register investigate it before releasing information. I would say go with WhoisGuard from Namecheap.

I've not heard of this either, and especially if the site was under privacy protection. What registrars are you talking about?

Like the others, I've not heard of anything close to that! There's a reason that most places offer this as a paid service and if they were just handing out information that's likely a violation of their own Privacy Policy (but check that on their site).

Like Steve requested, I'd like to know what Registrar in particular you're talking about as I've never heard anything like that before.

Not sure about the privacy tools (I would presume they are all very generic).

However, if you are interested in security, the domain community in its majority has been naming Moniker.com as the most secure domain registrar.

I've used NameCheap's as well as 1and1's private reg. service for certain domains of mine and have not had this problem with either one.

I too am curious of what registrar you're talking about as I certainly will be avoiding them in the future assuming what you heard is true.

I have read of this happening with GoDaddy before. This has not happened to me, but I do not want it to happen, hence my concern.

I guess I should just avoid GoDaddy in this case.

Any legit registrar should not be doing this. Not only is it against the privacy protection terms, it is also very unethical and poor business practice. Any registrar doing such a thing should be turned in to the proper organization for reprimanding or something.

There might be possibility of scams or something hidden behind domains so just make sure to register the domain name and do privacy protection with reliable registrar only.

I agree. It pays to be cautious about these kind of things.