ICANN Asked To Shut Down "Worst" Chinese Registrar

Ian Lamont writes "Anti-spam service Knujon has released reports highlighting how certain registrars in the US and abroad have consistently failed to live up to certain WHOIS-related obligations under ICANN's Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) — specifically, the requirement that people or company registering domains provide valid contact information. Now the firm is requesting that ICANN shut down the worst alleged offender, Xinnet Bei Gong Da Software. According to Knujon, none of the WHOIS records in a sample of 11,000 alleged spam sites registered through Xinnet and reported by Knujon to ICANN's Whois Data Problem Report System were corrected in a six-month period ending in May 2008 — and the Chinese registrar continues to register about 100 spam sites per day. In many cases, says the Knujon document (PDF), Xinnet does not have 'any Whois record data for review while the sites are still active' and the spam sites further promote 'seal abuse' by posting bogus BBB, Verisign, and other trusted industry seals. ICANN says it is investigating. ICANN has just posted a draft revised RAA that is open for public comment until August 4. However, the wording of Section 3.7.8, governing registrars' obligations to check and correct domain owners' contact information, hasn't changed."

Comments

seal abuse

[Lehk228]

"Seal Abuse"

wow did the mental giants who first thought up using an inline graphic to portray legitimacy ever consider that someone may.... save... said graphic and re-use it.

My prediction: Internet segmentation

[erroneus]

As it stands, I have observed some common practices of simply blocking traffic going to or coming in from IPs from certain foreign nations. For some businesses, this practice alone reduces a tremendous amount of spam without affecting normal business flows. It would also make sense for users and businesses to restrict all communications with peers outside of their borders if, in fact, it has no adverse affect to their business flows.

Ultimately, this could lead to a segmented internet where entire nations find themselves effectively cut off by policy.

I am undecided about whether or not this is a good idea, but if China and Russia won't stop their criminals, perhaps they shouldn't have a presence on the global internet. The message? Play nice or you won't be allowed to play at all! My guess is that internet sanctions would have much faster reaction than economic sanctions.

Re:My prediction: Internet segmentation

[dbIII]

The problem is that this ISP takes international registrations from spammers everywhere so blocking by a nations IP blocks is not going to help at all. Xenophobia may be comforting but is no help when the many of the criminals are likely to be in your own nation, it's better to go after them directly. As for hampering commerce with major trade partners to slow down some petty crooks that may be next door - implications are worth thinking about.

Re:My prediction: Internet segmentation

[Shatrat]

Sorry, it's hard to hear you when you're speaking from atop such a high horse. That's a pretty condescending attitude on your part as well.
We may have more spammers here, but at least we have a history of prosecuting and convicting at least some of them.
I don't really know whether China/Russia have ever convicting anyone of spamming, but TFA refers to a registrar that is either incompetent or complicit dealing with spammers and located in China.
Sometimes it's ok to criticize a country other than the USA.
Just let that sink in a little.

Re:My prediction: Internet segmentation

[ChameleonDave]

We may have more spammers here, but at least we have a history of prosecuting and convicting at least some of them. What difference does that make to me, sitting here with an inbox full of American spam?

anti-spam kills anonymous speech

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Yet again, "ID cards" are proposed as a method to curb spam, at the expense of anonymous speech.

When are we going to actually fix our protocols?

Re:anti-spam kills anonymous speech

[MadnessASAP]

Nothing wrong with the protocols, they work work just fine. In fact they work so well that around the world they are capable of handling millions of messages a day across a constantly changing network with an incredibly small failure rate. Perhaps what in fact need to be fixed is the people and the businesses they run, may I suggest a crowbar or other suitably large piece of metal.

Diplomatic incident

[Alain Williams]

This could cause a Chinese/USA diplomatic incident. The Chinese upset ''because ICANN (a branch of the government of the USA) is exerting unfair control over the Internet''.

This is one reason why ICANN should be made completely independent of the USA government.

Re:GASP and SHOCK!

[Anonymous Coward]

Spam from China? GASP!

Funny how all the spam I receive is from Chinese servers but advertising for US products only available for purchase in the US and leading to US websites.

pot. kettle.

Not really

[damn_registrars]

It's ironic that they want domain owners to provide valid contact information in the belief that this will stop spam.
No, actually it really isn't ironic at all. The mechanism makes sense when one considers how many more internet users there are than internet domains. The purpose of requiring valid contact information is so that there is a valid mechanism for contacting the owners of domains that are being spamvertised. The reasoning behind this is simple - if the companies that benefit from spam are required to make their true contact information known, then a mechanism to take action against them is available.

Which is where the problem lies with the registrar mentioned by the article (as well as many others). If you don't know where a company is actually located, you have no mechanism to try to take action against them.