I have purchased a number of websites from individuals who have had a private Whois or no means of contact listed on their website. It requires a significant amount of sleuthing but the point is these people all sold their sites anyway. You may not ever be actively looking to sell but it’s short sighted to not provide a means of contact for an asset that has value and can be sold.

You might find it short sighted, but that does not mean that people shouldn't have a choice.

I get offers for my domains, all unwanted.

If I at some point decide to sell one of those to one of them, all the cold approaches from the past don't suddenly get legitimized.

edit: as I'm writing this, I remember that this is quite similar to the selling of social media IDs. Some random crypto start up decided that they should try to bully me to sell them my three letter Twitter handle. Really annoying.

The same reasoning should then apply to everything you own: there should be an organization forcing you to put your email address or phone number on your car, on your house, ... Even if you have no plans to sell those assets, let people contact you if they want to buy them (or help you sell them).

My county assessor's office maintains a database of property owners in my area and their contact information. They have a convenient website where I can access this information at any time.

My state department of motor vehicles maintains a database of vehicles registered in the state and the contact information for their owners. While they do not have a convenient website for querying this data themselves, they make it available to third parties in bulk, and I can obtain individual records for those third parties convieniently using their websites.

Both these databases are mandated by my state legislature. So it seems the same reasoning does apply.

One difference is that the state also provides title to these assets, with all the legal protection that this does (or does not) imply.

Another difference is that this contact information does not, AFAIK, include recipient-paid [1] contact methods such as mobile phone (including text) and e-mail. Also, methods such as phone are generally considered far more intrusive that, for example, paper mail.

[1] nowadays this is mosty nominal, but we're not quite at zero

> If the domain owner doesn't provide an email on the website reached through the respective domain itself it's probably a signal that they don't want to be approached.

Not true. Many people don't realize the value of what they have. And/or they won't see a message because of spam etc (could argue that this happens with whois also but generally the more clues the better).

Note that with physical real estate it is often purchased by someone wanting a property that has no sale sign. Also (per my other comment) there are many people who don't know the value of what they have.

So it's not a signal at all in many cases (I have over 2 decades of first hand knowledge of this btw.)

Besides it all comes down to price. You may not want to sell your house but if someone comes to offer you 3x what you paid you might listen to them. You may 'not want to sell' for what the market price is. Selling prices for domains are all over the map.