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ICANN Accepting Public Comments On Whois Privacy
Decius6i5 writes "ICANN is accepting public comments on its three whois privacy and accuracy working groups until July 5th. Some of the proposals from the third working group, on improving whois accuracy, have been described as hostile to internet users. The working group proposes that if DNS Whois registration data for a domain is inaccurate, the domain should be immediately placed on hold, and cancelled if the error is not corrected within 15 days. An article on Circle ID suggests that the DNS Whois system is not the best way to share contact information for networks, and that ICANN should focus its efforts on improving IP Address Whois instead. What do you think?"
I use namecheap.com to buy all my domains, for an extra $4.95/year per domain, I get whois guard protection.
Do a whois on a domain of mine, and you get contact info to the registrar. Want my real info? Better have a subpoena ready..
The contact information on the web site was my own (!) ... so all I could do was take a look at whois data and send 'em a "WTF" note - it did get resolved (whole summary coming shortly), but having at least SOMEONE to contact via whois was helpful.
Having said that, it does suck that the spammers harvest these Email addresses.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
This isn't funny or flamebait but when I do 'whois google.com' I get the following
.com and .net domains can now be registered
C OM I NE .THAN.SECZY.COM
[vijay@vijay vijay]$ whois google.com
[whois.crsnic.net]
Whois Server Version 1.3
Domain names in the
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.
GOOGLE.COM.SUCKS.FIND.CRACKZ.WITH.SEARCH.GULLI.
GOOGLE.COM.HAS.LESS.FREE.PORN.IN.ITS.SEARCH.ENG
GOOGLE.COM
To single out one record, look it up with "xxx", where xxx is one of the
of the records displayed above. If the records are the same, look them up
with "=xxx" to receive a full display for each record.
I am not sure if my system's connecting to the wrong server or the server itself is screwed up.
But 'whois tachyontech.net' works fine so I guess there's a problem with the server.
Am sure that if results turn up like this no one needs to worry about privacy.
But It would be more than useful for everyone if ICANN or whatever organisation first makes sure that the information that is being provided by different whois servers is atleast proper.
but one thing that seems important to me is that fraudulant contact information be handled differently than inaccurate information. No sense blackholing honest mistakes and no sense letting spammers and criminals run free
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Its such a pain trying to remember the address of Wrigley Stadium.
On one hand, it would help kill domains run by spammers, assuming they haven't gone to get a post office box On the other hand, it would hinder somebody if they change their address - and forget to do so on their whois record. On the third hand...well, as irrelevant as this sounds, you now have to get a DBA or a business license in order to put a business name on a post office box with the USPS, as I recently found out. This is as of 01Jan2004. So it's entirely probable that they won't just get a PO Box.
This sig no verb.
What about requiring the registrant of a domain name to provide a digital ID or PGP key, and require the same for inquiries?
something has to be done.. most/all of my spam is because of my email was in my domains' whois info (or from NNTP newsgroup from YEARS ago, which didn't get spammed 'til a year or two later) Maybe something that requires human interaction to get the info, so spammers can't run some script and just harvest emails from whois
Why doesn't ICANN just take a few months off, stop any new sites coming out while it fixes the old ones.
There seems to be more and more internet every day. At this rate I'll never finish reading it.
I have found whois information to be useful in helping me determine the validity of several mom-and-pop Internet stores. It's also come in handy for providing leads (sometimes forged, yes, but many times even forged info provides a good lead) for tracking down spammers and their employers.
I'd consider it a loss if the validity requirements on whois degenerated any further than they already have.
I've been reading through the working group papers. It looks to me like the whole thing was written by the goddamn spammers themselves. They want to make it virtually impossible for anyone outside of law enforcement agencies (and we know how good they are at stopping spam) from getting whois information.
... I saw some very convincing looking information from what appeared to be a grassroots organization on an issue I was somewhat interested in. (arguing against a pollution cleanup) Just out of curiousity, I did a whois on the domain, and found out that it was owend by the company that did the polluting ... the "grass" was astroturf.
... you can get in touch with the guy who's got unauthorized copies of your stuff and ask him to take it down, and settle things on friendly terms, without having to pay a lawyer a few hundred dollars to write a letter to say exactly the same thing. Maybe we should all be required to have lawyers walking around with us so that they can pass on anything we might want to say to someone we meet? And lawyers don't like being called "mouthpieces"? Feh!
We need better whois information, not less of it. We need it available to more people. We need more openness, not more secrecy. Openness cleans up problems -- secrecy nurtures them. Nor is it limited to spam and network abuse.
A random example
So people can spam me all they like, they can abuse the resources I depend on, they can attack my servers, they can do whatever they feel like, and with their domain registration information kept an ironclad secret by this new proposal, I can't do a damn thing about it. Oh, wonderful.
Or maybe it was written by the lawyers. One of the criticisms of the current policy by the working group is that it permits person-to-person contact without any lawyers involved. Yes, they actually said that. Gee, how terrible