Thanks for the comments, I'm not normally one to have a rant but this one ticked me off and I reacted. I'm still annoyed/baffled that they don't include this feature as standard practice, I mean really, how hard could it be to 'hide' this information (does it really cost a $1 a month to set a flag automatically (that can really be set just once)?)
It's a blatant grab for money and regardless of the organisation, it's disappointing and doesn't speak well for their business culture from my perspective (and I'll leave it at that :) ). thanks
Doesn't pretty much every registrar offer "WhoisGuard" or similar privacy products? I have it for a bunch of domains (mostly via Namecheap) for $2/year or something like that.
The few domains that I don't have it on do, indeed, receive tons of (mostly web dev / SEO) spam to the published e-mail address.
I doubt NetRegistry were sending you that web dev spam - there's really no need for them too - it happens _all the time_. The spammers are trawling the newly registered domain lists and looking up the domain contact details via whois. Doesn't matter _who_ you register domains with this happens (I've got several this week from a domain I registered using AWS Route53).
Net Registry are _very_ marketing pushy, so they've almost certainly recognised this and are trying to monetise it - but I strongly doubt they're going anywhere near "extortion". This is (in my opinion) less like "Nice place you've got here, it'd be a pity if something happened..." but closer to "Hey, we noticed you've moved into a kinda dodgy neighbourhood - have you considered one of our great insurance plans?"