The governing body of domain names, ICANN, says you should have “not false” information about yourself as the domain name owner (see article on GoDaddy website here). My guess is that it’s so when they’re tracking down spammers they can find the information about the guilty party and go after them.
It basically says this:
At least annually, a registrar must present to the registrant the current Whois information, and remind the registrant that provision of false Whois information can be grounds for cancellation of their domain name registration. Registrants must review their Whois data, and make any corrections.
And they aren’t really giving you any leeway to avoid it either. With WHOIS information lookup tools now available, even the general public can conduct a WHOIS lookup on any website to find the real information behind a domain. If a random person was to do a WHOIS search on your website and find that the information was fake, then they could potentially report your “false” information directly to ICANN.
So, be as accurate as you like, but there’s no way I’m putting my phone number on a public document. Personally, I put my street and city, but not my phone number and I put an email address I don’t care about being spammed (my Yahoo address or a made up email in my domain, e.g. [email protected]).
I also take advantage of the many private registrations available via your domain registrar.
