Congress (Still) Looking at whois

bief writes: "A NY Times [free reg., blah, blah] story examines the whois database debate and provides a fair reading of the current situation about the list that which is being abused by 'marketers who regularly cull the Whois database for e-mail addresses and phone numbers to add to their spam lists.' Responses from registrars to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property were due on February 1st, but Chris J. Katopis, counsel to the subcommittee, said that as of last week many registrars had not replied. 'If they're not going to respond to a government inquiry,' he said, 'what are they going to do to respond to an aggrieved individual when something happens?'"

Comments

Good initiative

[Daath]

The administrator of DK-TLD has already implemented some security for the Danish registrants - You can't do a whois on .dk domains any more - You must use their website to get the information... Also you can contact them, and have them hide your email, snail mail address etc so you can actually be sort of anonymous.

Re:Good initiative

[jjon]

The .uk domain is even stricter - only the name of the person who registered the site is publicly available.

Lookup my .co.uk domain

In the UK, we have a law called the "Data Protection Act" that protects all "personally identifiable information". This covers my name, e-mail and postal addresses, telephone number, etc - in fact basically anything that's held in a computer and can be retrieved by searching on my name. Companies are not allowed to gather, hold, disclose or use this information without my consent, and if they don't have a good reason to keep it (e.g. if they're just using it for advertising) then I can ask them to delete it.

This law also stops spammers operating from the UK - they can't legally make a list of e-mail addresses without getting consent from the people involved.

It's a pity the US doesn't have similar laws.

Consider using myprivacy.ca

[richard-parker]

Consider using the myprivacy.ca whois-harvester-buster. Create a free @myprivacy.ca e-mail address, and then use it in your whois information. If you've registered your domain from (and admittedly small set) of participating ICANN registrars any mail from the registrar will be forwarded to you automatically, but if someone else sends e-mail to the myprivacy.ca e-mail address they have to answer a simple confirmation e-mail before their e-mail will be forwarded to you.

Of course, this doesn't help if the registrar decides to send you spam...

whois house.gov

[Anonymous Coward]

How's this for a response? Imagine that poor Adams guy getting called by 250,000 /.'ers. With 3 numbers listed, at least one of them has to be accessible. And it's the House I.S. guy, if we piss him off he can just stop all email for the representatives until they do something

U.S. House of Representatives (HOUSE-DOM)
Ford House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Domain Name: HOUSE.GOV
Status: Active

Administrative Contact:
Adams, Joseph L. (JLA1)
(202) 692-1337
JOE.ADAMS@MAIL.HOUSE.GOV

Domain servers in listed order:

MERCURY.HOUSE.GOV 143.231.1.67
CADMIUM.HOUSE.GOV 143.231.249.195

Record last updated on 16-Jan-02.

Information Systems, U.S. House of Representatives (NET-HOUSE2)
2nd and D Street, S. W.
Washington, D.C. 20515
US

Netname: HOUSE2
Netblock: 143.231.0.0 - 143.231.255.255

Coordinator:
Adams, Joseph (JA1117-ARIN) joe.adams@MAIL.HOUSE.GOV
(202) 226-6194 (FAX) (202) 226-0123

Domain System inverse mapping provided by:

MERCURY.HOUSE.GOV 143.231.1.67
NS3.CW.NET 204.70.25.234
CADMIUM.HOUSE.GOV 143.231.249.195

Record last updated on 27-Jan-1998.
Database last updated on 1-Mar-2002 19:57:27 EDT.

Congress has no constitutional authority...

[dada21]

We can not allow Congress to do this. The Constitution prohibits them from regulating this industry. If we don't want our information available on whois, we must find a private market solution. I just can't believe people would want MORE government in an area where the lack of government has propelled all of our lives to higher standards.

If you dislike the whois database containing your information, let's e-mail, call, and write letters to the organizations telling them we want more privacy. Eventually, we must find a way to find a provider who will offer us the privacy we want.

Or, use the free market solution -- create an e-mail address you don't use, and check it once in a while for important e-mails. Filter out anything but what comes from your ISP or registrar.