Signing up isn't that easy! When asked for state within Australia, for billing purposes (compulsory field),the only available options seem to be within America. Is this a genuine deal?

Outside The Capital of the World, state isn’t compulsory for the initial sign-up. It is on a subsequent page, but you get to type it in.

Interestingly, the domains are coming from Melbourne IT.

Thats a real bargain..... what you warned people about on is how yahoo makes money.. they sell domains cheap and everything at an exhorbitant rate... their hosting is 3 times more expensive than similar packages by other companies....

What about the last page of registration that says your private details (name, address, phone number, etc.) will be available to the public unless you pay an extra $9 for a private domain.

What do others think about that? Is there another way around it (apart from supplying false details)?

Don't supply false details. If you do, the domain name can be taken away from you - it is a requirement of ICANN (the group that administers Internet domains) that correct contact details must be provided.

Mike Healan at spywareinfo mentions DomainsbyProxy in last weeks newsletter, It seems you can hide your personal details through a third party but I guess it would not apply to Yahoo $2 names.

http://www.spywareinfo.com/newsletter/archives/2005/aug19.php#dbp

I registered and was a bit of a rigmaroll but I got it up and running and just got in by the skin of my teeth. My partner also registered and I took the advice of going to ZoneEdit for forwarding. After using Yahoo forwarding it placed a nice big fat advertisement at bottom of the page. If I wanted that I would go to a free hosting site but it will take Zone Edit a couple of days before the nameservers reroute my site. I am looking forward to seeing the results :-)

Thanks Jeremy,

I wasn't contemplating falsifying my details. The alternatives don't seem very atractive though! I suspect that if my real home address, real phone number, and real email address are made available to the public this will invite spam (or worse). Otherwise it seems one can pay $9 (a year?) to avoid having private contact details publicly available (apparently they use Melbourne IT as the contact in that case). The $2 a year domain loses its attraction faced with these two choices.

Is this the case with any domain registration, or is it unique to Yahoo?

Thanks again Jeremy for your comment. Love your fastmail service and great to have you sharing the load with cw!

Edgy, I don't find it too problematic myself - and I've got over 100 domains registered! I have a voicemail number I use for this info - you can get one from www.j2.com if required. Since you're using FastMail.FM, you can easily create an alias or use subdomain addressing to avoid spam (e.g. list 'domain@yourname.fastmail.fm' as your email address). See http://www.fastmail.fm/docs/faqparts/AliasesAndVirtualDomains.htm#SubDomain for more info.

I have had a huge laugh here today...just playing with my domain and using Zone Edit. I redirect all mail that has my domain in it to me at my fastmail address. I can send emails to hotlips@xxxxx.com and it will be delivered...I can send mail to stinkybum@xxxxxx.com and it will be delivered.
No to be honest I have been testing the email forwarding with stuff like support@xxx, enquiries@xxx, admin@xxx but would be interesting to see if they do filter silly stuff.
I am waiting for the NS to take effect on my partners site so i can send email to uneedtodiet@xxxx.com
Cheers
Hally