Sitetrail

Does anyone know anything about this sitetrail.com? They appear to analyses social networking and media sites like the ones we build here. I was just contacted by a friend who said i better get on that site and have a look because they have published my name, home address, post code ect for the whole world to see, they stopped short at publishing my home telephone number. They use some kind of whois  information that is kept for all registered domains. Is there a way to prevent them from doing this legally surely they cannot be allowed to just post our personal details on the internet like this just because we run a social networking site? I am asking you guys hoping one of you will know what our rights are in regards to this area. I did contact my internet provider who have switched my domain name address over to their own company name but i feel this is short term thing and means they now own mysite :(  

You did not need to switch your domain. But i would switch it back as soon as you can. Most domain registers have to wait 60-90 days to transfer domains that were just transferred.

Then look into a service most domain registers now provide to make your whois data private. Your host should have told you about that option before transferring the domain. Unless of course the company you registered your domain name with does not offer that service.

Without that service, whois data is public and anyone can see it. And yes, as long as the data is public it can be used to create databases such as sitetrail. It is perfectly legal.

Also keep in mind that the service to make your data private can be quite expensive, so make sure your aware of those fees as well.