it's illegal to do that
hardly. ICANN isn't a government thing. you're not going to get in any real trouble
and it doesn't really make any difference. random people on the internet aren't going to know your real address or phone number, and google definitely isn't going to try to contact you by snail mail or a text before trying your email address
Yeah, I saw that too, still thinking about going for it though since a year is pretty long
yeah but $40 is a lot of money for a domain name