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Detecting Anonymously Registered Domains
Spamresource.com has up a piece describing a new service that could be useful in evaluating the reputation of sites you deal with — anonwhois.org returns information on domains registered anonymously. It provides a DNSBL-style service that "is not a blacklist and wasn't meant to be used for outright rejection of mail." Only 619,000 domains are listed so far, but more are added as they are queried, so the database will grow more complete. Anonwhois.org seems to be a sister site to Spam Eating Monkey.
It provides a DNSBL-style service that "is not a blacklist and wasn't meant to be used for outright rejection of mail.
Which of course means that in a year or two us mail administrators will start encountering mail servers that have been setup to reject mail based soley on them being on this blacklist.
In 2010, who *doesn't* use a "hiding" service for a domain? For fifteen years now you'd basically have to throw away any e-mail address on a domain, and get inundated with physical spam on any mailing address used.
Black listing domains because the owner doesn't want to deal with jackass spammers and bulk mailers is just stupid.
This is the dumbest thing since lawn darts. I can tell you who is listed anonymously just by looking at the standard whois database. There's only a handful of privacy companies that represent the majority of anonymous domains. If you could find their contact information then that would be useful.
Congrats, you are the proud owners of a text parsing machine.
I can't think of a good use for this flavor of dnsbl... too little correlation with anything that matters. A lot of privacy-conscious domain owners use private registration, and it has nothing to do with using the domain for spam or other nefarious purposes.
I don't see the point of this. My own domain is not anonymized, but I get a lot of spam and it also somehow bothers me that anyone can see my address. If I would register a new domain, I'd surely subscribe to one of those anon services. And I'm not a spammer. In fact, wouldn't it be much better if domains were anonymous by default and the registrars provided email forwarding services? I think so.
I'm not a spammer, so why should I be honest and publish my true whois info? Whenever I do, cold-callers bug me at 11pm for security systems, credit cards, and worse; if I leave for more than 5 days my mailbox gets so full of junk mail they stop delivering until I go downtown for it. And since I am not abusing anyone, no one has a concern about how to call me, except those that want to spam me -- am I truly the scum of the earth for hiding? Or why should I pay for a po box and answering voicemail for the same spammers? If I do something that needs to get me put offline, the police can get a warrant through the registrar like every other real issue. Or they can take my site down until I call, or whatever. Don't make me force feed my home info for spammers. The other 0.01% of the time there's still a way to get the info, it's just a hassle, a hassle for which someone is gonna get paid. Leave it alone already. I got lucky with midnight phone calls and phonebook sized junkmails -- what happens when your psycho forum members get mad and publish your contact info? Oh yeah, and those privacy services just transfer ownership to your registrar. You lost your legal right when you bought that.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Registered under Shell Company X owned by son/daughter of employee. Not anonymous, possibly fraudulent, but as if anyone's going to waste their time tracking every company contact down.
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
While that is certainly a use for anonymous registration, there are a lot of us who register anonymously to avoid having our names and addresses unnecessarily exposed to spam and risk of identity theft.
This is just more kdawson FUD.
I thought he was relegated to the night shift. Guess not.
CIRA (the ".ca" registry) has a feature called "whois privacy" which hides the information of individuals who register domains by default. Only businesses get their information published in the whois database (by default - individuals and businesses can turn this on or off, although businesses need to provide CIRA with a good reason why they want their whois info hidden).
Everyone who has brought up or agreed with any of the points raised here (private information protection, spammers lying, disclaimers not working, etc), please use the contact form on the anonwhois site to send them a message informing them that they're doing us all a disservice. Doubtful that we'll get anywhere, but you never know... Note: in the case that this is a front for spammers trying to farm information, you'll probably not want to associate your domain with this site in any way.
That's a good idea. We do something like that at SiteTruth, where we down-rate commercial sites that don't have a real-world contact address on the site. We're looking at user-visible pages, though, not WHOIS. WHOIS data quality is too low.
I'm all in favor of this sort of thing. But don't drop the messages silently; reject them during the SMTP session if you can, or send a mail bounce if you can't. There's much to be said for having a hard-ass attitude about this, but you have to handle the false positives properly.
Anything that sends mail bounces needs to check SPF records. This makes it possible to stop joe-job mail bounce problems. (EXIM mailer people: please finish the implementation of SPF checking and advance it from "experimental", so large ISPs can use it.)
Also, quit whining that putting your real name on your WHOIS registration will get you annoying phone calls, threats, or whatever. I've had my real name and contact info on all my web sites and WHOIS information for a decade, and that's just not happening.
You can still buy Lawn Darts. Apparently, the sale of the entire set of them is illegal, but selling the parts is not.
This place:
http://www.lawndartparts.com/
sells the parts on their own, so you wind up paying around $200 for a whole set, but if you really want them, you can get them.
Anonwhois.org whois data refers to SpamEatingMonkey.com
SpamEatingMonkey.com whois information only has a PO Box as a real world (non email / non internet) contact address.
The admin, technical and registrant contacts are all "SEM Admin" which refers to "admin@spameatingmonkey.com"
This is anonymous in the real world.
So basically they are saying that a PO Box is OK but listing your hosting company address is not.
Anyone can go and set up a PO Box anonymously. If this takes hold then it will just force legitimate users to register PO Boxes. Spammers can do this too.
You know, I can't think of a Spam domain that I've checked that uses a proxy service. Most are registered in Russia or China with addresses - that are probably fake.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
This is why my domain is registered with name and contact information: Bill Gates, Redmond, WA, 555-1212.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
This sounds a lot like the whois DNSBL service by rfc-ignorant.org, which has been around for much longer. Why do we need another one?
I absolutely disagree! I know many private citizens, small personal sites, public people including A-list stars who are running their own websites and for obvious reasons don't want their registration information known to everyone, so they pay the $8.00 to make it private.
It is a horrible idea to allow all contact data for a people that own a DNS to be accessed by any stalker who knows how to use terminal and "WHOIS".
Do you really want your 18 year old daughter's registry information including her cellphone available to anyone who can sift it out because she happened to take a "how to make a website" class?
Come on, there are many industrial and effective answers to fighting spam without using broad exclusion methods that will render a lot of false positives and expose a lot of information into the public that has no business being there.