Slashdot Mirror
Exposing Personal Information in the Whois Database
rocketjam writes "In a letter to U.S. Representatives Lamar S. Smith and Howard L. Berman, the Center for Democracy and Technology has raised the issue of privacy problems with the Whois Database. Acknowledging the database is uncontroversial for commercial registrations, the letter points that private individuals who register a domain name expose their names, home addresses, home phone numbers, and home e-mail addresses to the world. The letter warns, 'The current Whois regime is on a collision course with public sensitivities and international law. In an era of concern about identity theft and online security, it is unwise to require millions of individual registrants to place their home phone numbers, home addresses, and personal email accounts into a publicly available database that places no restrictions on the use of that data.' Additionally, the letter points out the current policy violates the privacy laws of some nations."
I get numerous spam from people(?) who have obviously trawled the whois database. Even though there is a strong warning in the whois database against abusing it, how does one report it, or is it just an empty threat?
Even exposing contact information for a business is questionable. If you're working on penetrating a company, then this is a stop on the highway. But, without that information, then (as one poster stated) the FBI would have to get us the information we need to prosecute spammers or etc.
I don't know what the answer is either; I don't think it's simple either. This may be one (of many) invasions of our privacy we have to deal with. Banks, Mortgage Companies, Credit Cards--these all sell our information to other companies. It's sad, but this is big business, and it makes money. Utilities provide information to Local, State, and Federal Agencies all of the time; and are required to by law.
Our information is not private anymore, and hasn't been for a long time. Everyone has their hand out for it.
In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the c
Or they do and realize an enemy could use that to his advantage to snatch away your domain. Providing false information is reason to lose your domain... or at least used to be in the carefree days when .edu domains were actually educational institutions, .com were businesses, .org were non-profit orgs and individuals, and .net were ISPs. *sigh* The good old days 10 years ago.