Slashdot Mirror
Russia to Halt Public Access to .RU Whois Data?
An anonymous reader writes "A Domain Tools blog post is reporting on a Russian newspaper article regarding a provision of Russian law that would prohibit public access or posting of Whois data for the .RU TLD without written permission. The Personal Data law, which the article states went into effect on January 30, 2007, will require compliance by RosNIIROSa (www.ripn.net) by 2010."
In Canada its not prohibited to look up information, but as an individual with a registered domain, I don't have to have my information in the whois record. Check out Privacy.ca
That this means the single largest collection of hacking and spamming sites will now have protection against people finding out who even owns the domains they run from?
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
There's absolutely no reason that in the US we must have valid contact information in that database. I use my work address, phone number, and my website spam GMail account on there because I don't want to deal w/the bullshit spam, letters in the mail, etc.
Whoever had the bright idea to mandate that for ending spam didn't think clearly. Perhaps Russia (while not their motivation for this move) is on the right track.
In Soviet Russia, compromat.ru own YOU!
is soviet russia domains whois you!!!
Does this mean that we can report security attacks to abuse@kremlin.ru?
Check out my sysadmin blog!
Not just broken by the spammers, though they're in large part responsible for making much info inaccessible, it's also broken by the lack of standards and registrar greed.
Just try to write a tool to automatically parse WHOIS output to get the registration date of a domain (a good heuristic when determining whether a domain is spammy -- a 1-day old domain merits a little more investigation than a 1-year old one). Assuming the info is available at all and not hidden behind some captcha-enabled web page (not just to shield from spammer harvesting, but also to throw sales pitches at you), the date field could be anywhere, and in any format. Hell, I've even seen registrars use MM/DD/YY format, two-digit years no less. Some even use multiple formats. It's crazy insane.
RIPE appears to actually have their shit together, and uses a pretty good uniform format. Bully for RIPE, but that's generally only good for IP WHOIS, and the rest is being eroded as the rest of the WHOIS system decays at the seams.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
WHOIS(1) BSD General Commands Manual WHOIS(1) NAME whois -- Internet domain name and network number directory service DESCRIPTION The whois utility looks up records in the databases maintained by several Network Information Centers (NICs).
It also means more privacy for everyone else too.
You want to identify yourself by a public address, that is usually claims that you are a particular organization/individual, on the Internet. And yet... you don't want to identify yourself? I should have no way to check contact information for russianinvestmentbank.ru and call the authorities to see if the address really belongs to a bank? This defeats the whole purpose of having domains. Just use IRC, P2P or DynDNS if you want shadowy anonymity.
Agreed !
Public access to this was a stupid idea, it only helps spammers/direct mailers.
If the info is required by law enforcement, then they should have to get a warrant and ask the ISP.
The general public/internet does not need to know the private info.
In soviet Russia, domain names and IPs whois you!
I got so sick of all the spam coming from Russia that I blocked everything there years ago.
I no longer need to look those IP ranges up.
Spammers have already laid .ru low. I know of more than a few small to medium companies that flat out drop emails if there's a .ru _anywhere_ in the email. Not just the from or reply to fields. If there's a http link pointing to a .ru domain, they drop it.
.ru's problems right now. Though it boggles me how a TLD trustee can get away with not publishing whois information while still under ICANN's rules.
I try to tell them that just dropping "mail.ru" would be a better longterm strategy, but their minds are usually made up. I think this may be some kind of holdover from the cold war.("The Russian's have internets?! Blockade their commie propaganda!")
Anyway, my point is that lack of whois information is the least of
May the Maths Be with you!
We block email from TLDs without a public whois server, including those who expect us to fuck around with a web interface (.EU for example).
If you don't have your contact details in whois - don't send mail from your domain!
Of course not. There is no legitimate reason why anyone would want to contact the domain owner about some issue with the site or its content.
And your hosting company should just reject all requests and complaints. They are just a hosting company and have no need to get involved with anything else. You pay, they host, right?
If you want to post software, movies, music and child porn that should be nobody's business but yours and the rest of the world can just get stuffed. If someone has a problem with that, they can send you an email.
Unfortunately, that seems to be the prevailing attitude and current practice.
Of course not. There is no legitimate reason why anyone would want to contact the domain owner about some issue with the site or its content.
And your hosting company should just reject all requests and complaints. They are just a hosting company and have no need to get involved with anything else. You pay, they host, right?
You mean like the additional fees that the registrars/hosts get for hiding your personal contact information if you so choose? So this rule should apply only to people who don't want to have money extorted from them?
There's absolutely no reason that in the US we must have valid contact information in that database.
Dude, do you not know about GoDaddy's private registration service? I think in the past 3 years I've had exactly 2 emails sent to me through my domains' private registration service. It keeps your personal information from showing up in a WhoIs query.
Due to all the open speach spread by the internet.. governments around the world are having to crack down.. They don't like freedom.
That crackdown is going on here in the US. Government wants the DNS keys and to track every message we send.
The world is starting to becoming a very dark place as of late.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Dude, do you not know how much of a rip-off all the private registration services (also those not from GoDaddy) are, because they charge you for privacy?
hackerkey://v4sw5/7BCHJMPRUY$hw3ln3pr6/7FOP$ck6ma8+9u6L$w4/7CGUXm0l6DLRi82NCe3+9t5Sb7HMOPRen5a17s0DSr1/2p-3.62/-5.23g3/5
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
US corporations have too much money invested in Russia and China. Being unable to have the parts of their businesses communicate would be bad for business.
Passport needed to obtain .ru domain (phisically provide passport and sign the agreement) , so it's impossible to register .ru domain on a fake data, much easier to register domain in .com or any other zone that do not require identification (like .cc or .ws or .nu), so there is no real criminal sites in .ru zone.
See, for me, this is simply a matter of character. Or the appearance of it. If you don't want me to know who you are, why should I accept mail from your domain at all?
I run the email for a pretty small ISP. When a mail server (or farm) starts going crazy and trying to kill my servers with hundreds of connections per second; the first thing I do is drop the packets from the network. I then check the whois listing to see if it's yahoo! or ebay or something like that and consider unblocking it after I know who I'm dealing with.
When the whois says "NONAME NETOWRK ASSOcIATES" or there simply isn't anything listed, they stay on the drop list. So this is really a handy development. Essentially nothing from .ru will look legit anymore so I can just block all of it, right?
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
If the registrar or higher in the DNS food chain has something in the terms of service that mentions the data will be public, does agreeing to the TOS constitute permission? Possibly written permission?
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Estonian servers have been under constant barrage of DDOS attempts since April 26, much of which have been tracked to Russian servers. Now Russians try to obfuscate their whois. Is it just me, or are those two events linked...?
Such a policy is not without precedent. Tonga's NIC has kept registration information private for years.
Then again, Tonga's NIC also has a healthy anti-spam policy, including a provision for revealing registration info for domain names canceled for violating that policy.
But does keeping registration info private really help shield spammers? Who's to say that spammers are providing valid registration info in the first place? They abuse public registration records both ways: they falsify their own info to shield their identities, and they appropriate and abuse the info of honest people doing the right thing.
I am all for private registration records. If Russia enacts their law, they will have the exact opposite policy of the United States. And, damn, will I envy those Russians for it.
In conservative Canada, information protects you!
http://www.skullsecurity.org/blog/
There's always webmaster@example.com, and abuse@theirisp.net. I still don't see why you should have to put your real life address and other information that is completely irrelevant to anyone outside the registrar.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
Yes!
There is no legitimate reason why anyone would want to contact the domain owner about some issue with the site or its content.
Biiiiiiiig difference between people wanting to contact me and me wanting them to contact me.
And anyone that would need to use registration info to find me - I don't want to hear from, period.
You pay, they host, right?
Sounds like you get it so far (sarcasm ignored)...
If you want to post software, movies, music and child porn that should be nobody's business but yours and the rest of the world can just get stuffed.
The police and FBI have other tools at their disposal to track me down. So beyond the absurdities you give of actually breaking the law, yeah, "the rest of the world can just get stuffed". Bingo.
Unfortunately, that seems to be the prevailing attitude and current practice.
Really? Please point me to such a host! All the ones I've dealt with will drop you at even the hint of a copyright violation, nevermind committing a real crime.
Could be they don't want to have too much traffic either. I get the following message prior to the actual information:
Notice how they say they don't want automated tools banging away at their servers. At the very least, asy parsability of the output doesn't seem to be a design criterion, and this might also discourage the implementors of such tools further. There's also the matter of copyright to the data stored.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
We have known for a long time that "Leo Kuvayev" (aka "Alex Rodrigez"), one of the most prolific spammers on the internet, has ties to the Russian mob ( see http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/listing.lasso?-op=cn &spammer=Leo%20Kuvayev%20/%20BadCow ).
Previously, he went out-of-state (as in outside of Russia) to register his spamvertised domains. Some of his favorite registrars even started their own pro-spammer policies to obfuscate his WHOIS data to prevent people from being able to find out who and where he was.
Now, it looks like his home state will do it for him, for free.
I'm just not sure whats in it for Russia. Other than keeping Kuvayev's registration money inside their country.
When wouldn't this move coincide with multiple DDoS attacks from Russian IP addresses? :-P
I've used Whois data several times. It's esp. handy when the site is down, but you need to contact the webmaster.
The government can't save you.
But I would expect that the host's information, which they replace your info with, would cause them to be notified by authorities when the authorities wanted to deal with the domain. They would either just close you down immediately or forward such notices on to you... so notices from authorities would still get through.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
GoDaddy is a horrible registrar. They fold like a cheap suit when asked to reveal your "protected" information by just about anyone.
They also drop your name in a heartbeat if even a single piece of your registration data is incorrect.
There are, however, a few good registrars (like gandi.net) who take domain ownership and privacy very, very seriously.
Same goes for web hosts. There are a few who take a very aggressive stance against takedown requests, and many offshore who simply ignore them.
Nothing is inexplicable; only unexplained -Tom Baker, Doctor Who
Simple counter-example: Say I live in a country where people may well be murdered for having views contrary to (or critical of) the ruling regime and want to set up a protest website. In such a case (which, it so happens, is not only a genuine thing to want to do in many countries, but commonplace) you specifically need privacy, and that's a good thing. You think I should be forced to put my details on there and have it easy to find out who is behind the site?
So if someone noticed activity from one of your domains that would indicate a compromised machine, you wouldn't want to know about it? Nice. Get the fuck off my internet.
So if someone noticed activity from one of your domains that would indicate a compromised machine, you wouldn't want to know about it?
First of all, the only people likely to notice such activity, the host, would have my contact info (they like getting paid, dontcha know). That falls a whole world of difference from having my info visible to every spammer, stalker, and general jackoff who wants to annoy me.
Second, if I actually have a compromised machine, the only people who can help me will already have a task force on the problem, and you can read the CERT advisory in the morning right along with me. Not to say it couldn't happen, but if it does, no fix yet exists.
Get the fuck off my internet.
The internet lacks warmth and fuzzies. If you don't know how to play, get off the field.
You don't have to put your home address and phone number there. A PO box and pager would be fine as long as it can be used to contact you.
Bullshit. I've noticed characteristic bot activity a few times now and contacted the hosts, who were clueless and told me to contact the owner of the box (since they were a colo) since they didn't see a problem. That falls a whole world of difference from having my info visible to every spammer, stalker, and general jackoff who wants to annoy me.
Astonishingly, there are shades of gray in the world! A happy medium would be valid contact information that is not personally identifiable. Basically what those proxy services offer only made mandatory for registrars to supply at no additional cost.
The internet lacks warmth and fuzzies. If you don't know how to play, get off the field.
At my age, I've been playing longer than the vast majority of this site's users have been alive. I've weathered a couple generations of know-it-all punks like yourself and I'm not going anywhere.
Obviously this depends on the business, if you're a local company that has no sales on the worldwide market - no problem; otherwise blocking emails just because they contain ".ru" is a bad idea, to say the least...
The saddest poem
The article says ATM any owner of .ru domain can be seen, while many owners of .com domains can 'hide' behind registrar's data. It is going to be an optional service in case site owners want to do it. That's all. Turn your paranoid mods off, please!
Cheers!
If everyone follows RFC 2142 we wouldn't have to look at the whois records or search for an imprint or a contact page on the website.