Many Domains Registered With False Data

bakotaco writes "According to research carried out by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) many domain owners are hiding their true identity. The findings could mean that many websites are fronts for spammers, phishing gangs and other net criminals. The report also found that measures to improve information about domain owners were not proving effective." From the article: "The GAO took 300 random domain names from each of the .com, .org and .net registries and looked up the centrally held information about their owners. Any user can look up this data via one of the many whois sites on the net. The report found that owner data for 5.14% of the domains it looked at was clearly fake as it used phone numbers such as (999) 999-9999; listed nonsense addresses such as 'asdasdasd' or used invalid zip codes such as 'XXXXX'. In a further 3.65% of domain owner records data was missing or incomplete in one or more fields."

Comments

Or not wanting spam and such

[luvirini]

It does not allways have to be with criminal intent.. can also be simply not wanting the assocaiated spam.

Or maybe...

[isaac]

Maybe, just maybe, domain owners are sick of being spammed at their listed contact info. I know I am. It comes in all forms, too - email, snail-mail, telemarketers.

Pardon my English, but that sucks rocks.

Fortunately, some registrars offer privacy proxy services allowing you to list the registrar as the contact in the whois info. Unfortunately, not all registrars offer this service.

It may also be the case that people using obviously fake whois info do so for the legitimate purpose of free speech to avoid repressive governments or private institutions. The implication that all anonymous speech is fraudulent is unwarranted.

-Isaac

Re:God forbid...

[ScrewMaster]

Yes. And the disturbing trend is that anyone wishing to do so is presumptively considered to be a criminal, or a potential one (or better yet, a "terrorist".) Given how many "spammers, phishing gangs and other net criminals" end up in my Inbox every day I'd say I have a good reason for wanting to keep that information secret. After all, I pay for the disk space used to store my domain information: I should be able to do with it as I will. And considering that domains are essentially a disposable commodity to "net criminals" any effort to require accurate information will, as always, primarily penalize legitimate users.

It's a 2-way street.

[WaxParadigm]

"many domain owners are hiding their true identity [and could be] fronts for spammers, phishing gangs and other net criminals."

I hide my mailing address and use a rarely-checked email address to reduce the SPAM and physical junk mail I have to deal with. The scammers/SPAMmers don't want me to know who they are...I want to limit the information they have about me. Go figure.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

But the government wants to find you.

[sulli]

This is why the GAO is doing what it's doing. This has no (0) benefits for consumers.

Re:Or attempts at "Privacy"

[NormalVisual]

If you're in the U.S., register the domain(s) with a P.O. box for the address and a cellular phone number. I've been doing that for years, and have had exactly zero problems with people harassing me in any way. Of course, it means that you have to periodically go to the P.O. box to pick up any domain-related mail, but I already was having a fair bit of mail delivered to the box anyway.