DomainHELP

It never fails: somebody registers their first domain name and within 24 hours they're getting unsolicited email in their inbox and eventually more marketing material via postal mail.

What happened?

Most people's initial reaction is to blame their domain registrar, assuming their personal info has been sold. This is extremely rare. Most domain registrars really hate spam and unsolicited email.

If you've registered a domain under .COM, .NET, .ORG, .BIZ, or .INFO you will probably eventually receive a postal mailing from the Domain Registry of Canada or the Domain Registry of America which looks like this

The earlier versions looked a lot like a renewal invoice, the later ones have some fine print on them that this isn't really a "renewal invoice".

DomainTools (formerly whois.sc and not affiliated with DomainHelp or easyDNS) carries a whois history of many domains in the .com, .net, .org, .biz and .info top level domains.