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

It could also mean

[DrXym]

The findings could mean that many websites are fronts for spammers, phishing gangs and other net criminals.

Or that a great many domain owners see no reason to post their personal data up on the web where it is available to spammers, phishers or other net criminals. Not to mention random psychos who have some beef with the site's contents.

Legitimate reason to do it

[Sp00nMan]

I have a domain, and I use false information. What to know why? Because when I had my email and real address on my domain name, I got junk mail to my house, and spam to my email address! Until they can hide the contact info from the general public, I will keep falsifying my public information.

I don't want ppl to know my real contact info

[ThomasMis]

What about us regular folk who have a domain? I don't want the world knowing where I live, especially if I'm somebody who runs a blog with unpopular political views.

If I were a smart spammer

[millahtime]

If I were a smart spammer I would register it in someone elses name. Someone hillbilly who lives in the middle of nowhere. Maybe in the mountains. Odds fo getting caught, low. Looks real good to registrar, sure. Those won't show up in this search.

WHOIS guard

[Dreadlord]

I use a WHOIS guard service for all my domains, for a fee the company I registered my domains at lists their email/phone/address instead of mine, and forwards whatever they receive to me.

This way my domains have valid info but at the same time not everyone out there can get my address or phone number.

Many registrars have this as an optional service

[Nichotin]

Instead of using your name, they put their company info in the whois of your domain. Some registrars provide the service for free, while others charge (mine charges 2.99$ per year).

Re:Or attempts at "Privacy"

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree completely with not having the information publicly available.

My site has photos of lots of quite expensive art that I own. I am not particularly happy that anyone who sees it can simply look up my name and address and find out where I live.

There needs to be something better.

I had a stalker...

[gsfprez]

I actually had someone use the data from my domain registration to stalk me and my wife...

thank God i set the address to an old address where i used to live. How do i know that he used that data?

in his emails to us, he talked about how he was watching our apartment and described the old apartment i used to work at perfectly.

so - get fscked if you think i'll ever use my real personal data for my domains.

Re:I call BS - 3 pieces of junk mail 5 yrs

[Cecil]

I have specifically-named email accounts for each and every domain I own, which are registered through several different registrars. To each of these addresses, I get about 20 emails a week. Identical emails, sent to each address.

I think it's pretty obvious that there are certainly spammers trolling the whois database. I ask you, WHY would they pass up that super easy source of email addresses? But hey, it's my anecdote vs. your anecdote, do they cancel each other out?