Whois Privacy & Whois History for Expiring Domains

[zoogo]

Some of my domains will be expiring soon. When I purchased them, I didn't think about the whois, but they are domains which I do not want traceable to my other domains via whois. Not because of anything bad or illegal, just competitive advantage.

Since they are up for renewal, I figure I have two options, which is either change the whois at the same time I do the renewal, or purchase privacy when I do the renewal. I figure both do the same thing from a technical perspective.

My question is if there's any alternative action to take (e.g. letting them drop, then grabbing them - but would that make any real difference if somebody looked up their whois history?) that will potentially allow me to have more of a chance of not being listed on any of the whois history tools sites.

 

[zoogo]

Or alternatively, if there is no other way, shall I change the whois before renewal, or in the cart during renewal, or after? (This is with GoDaddy). Basically the question is, which way is least likely to get me on the radar of whois history?

 

[zoogo]

Anybody?

 

[cdboard]

many websites list expiring/expired domains, some with the whois info. so letting them expire might increase the instances of whois info out there (to be found by search engines).

if you are going to keep them, I would apply whois privacy (now).

if you are going to let them drop, I would change the whois to something fake (now).

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