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ICANN Seeks Comment On Limiting Anonymized Domain Registration

Posted by Soulskill on from the your-computer-is-broadcasting-an-ip-address dept.

angry tapir writes: Privacy advocates are sounding the alarm over a potential policy change (PDF) that would prevent some people from registering website addresses without revealing their personal information. ICANN, the regulatory body that oversees domain names, has asked for public comment on whether it should prohibit the private registration of domains which are "associated with commercial activities and which are used for online financial transactions."

4 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. hmmm by pfredphotos · · Score: 4, Insightful

    prohibit the private registration of domains which are "associated with commercial activities and which are used for online financial transactions

    I'm not sure I have a big problem with this. If you do business with a company that can just disappear, that'd be a bummer. That said, you shouldn't do business with a company like that, but people aren't always smart.

  2. Well... by EmeraldBot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have a feeling all the people who are talking about their privacy being invaded have yet to read the summary. It specifically mentions websites associated with "business and financial transactions". Are you proposing that to run a legitimate business, you don't ever have to reveal to your customers such basic things like a phone number or a mailing address? I find it awfully hard to trust a business that doesn't want any interaction with its customers whatsoever.

    --
    "Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
    1. Re:Well... by MobyDisk · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Are you proposing that to run a legitimate business, you don't ever have to reveal to your customers such basic things like a phone number or a mailing address?

      Actually, this happens all the time.

      I have purchased ads from Google, and I have never been given their address. Google goes out of their way to make sure there is no way to find a human for technical support. Same goes for Steam, eBay, PayPal. Today companies give you a forum and expect the community to support themselves. It's almost impossible to find them unless they sell a physical product.

  3. I'd go the other way. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Registrants of domains SHOULD be publicly contactable. It should not be OK for a domain to exist and there to be no way to get in touch with the owner of that domain (if they're sending spam, if you suspect their server has been compromised, if you have a legal issue with the domain's existence.) This is why there's a requirement for WHOIS information to exist. Contacting the owner of another domain SHOULD be a thing that you can do.

    The current "anonymous" registration process (other than being a cash cow for registrars) breaks the reason for having contactable registrants, without removing the requirement entirely. People EXPECT the system to work where domain registrants can be contacted, but usually it's an unmonitored e-mail account at their registrar who won't forward the message. The system is broken today.

    I don't have a problem with the registrant information being private IF it's replaced by information by which the registrant CAN be contacted. Register.com will let me pay them to be the publicly listed domain contact? Fine. Then they better have the ability to pass legitimate messages on to the actual owner (spam filters are fine, /dev/null inbox is not). They better be able to accept legal service on behalf of their customer. They better have the information about their customer to ALLOW that customer to be contacted.

    Either rip the whole notion of WHOIS information out by the roots in its entirety, or make it work properly. Half-ass measures like "well, we're OK with this not really working, except under these circumstances that aren't actually as well defined as you'd think....." make the problem worse, not better. Every owner should be contactable, and whether it's directly or through an anonymizing proxy third party shouldn't matter, as long as it actually works.