I agree with you, the amount of 'personal information' has increased. I think its partly because there's simply alot more people using the internet (for other things than finding baking recipies) than say 5 years ago but also because the internet today is a much more friendly place than it was years back. I mean, today people shop on the internet and do their banking online.... I still very clearly remember when people did'n trust that stuff just because it was on the 'internet'... Anyway, to answer your question; My rule of thumb is not to give any info out to anyone - full stop... but, of course, that policy is kinda underminded by the fact that everyone capable of doing a simple whois query could get just about every piece of information they would want...