Group sends our RFP for whois abuse study.
ICANN, through Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), is seeking proposals from qualified companies to study whois abuse. One of its proposed mechanisms for studying abuse is to set up a number of test domain names to see what happens to the whois data created for them.
A similar study (pdf) was conducted in 2007, but only to research whois harvesting for spam. In the new study, GNSO will also check for postal/phone solicitations, phishing, and identity theft.
A number of scams are perpetrated using e-mail addresses harvested from whois. Two popular ones are the renewal scam — which seeks to get you to transfer your domain to another registrar — and the domain appraisal scam. Whois data is also used for marketing. Even large companies have used whois data for marketing in the past; I once received a mailing from Yahoo addressed using whois contact information.
I have long proposed having a registry, or even ICANN-level domain masking service. This would mask all registration email addresses as [email protected] or similar, and would forward all mail to the domain owner. This would allow the registry or ICANN to shut down scams. (Although this probably isn’t a responsibility they’d like). Doing this would require a thick-whois model.
More information on ICANN’s RFP is here.
Ironic that this post should show an advertisement for Domaintools.com which is a horrible whois information abuser. They splash your name and home adress on google, to be found by anyone doing a search for your name on google, completely unrelated to domains. They are such abusive cowards that on their own site they list no name or address for their company or management. They are exactly what is wrong with the current whois system and how it is abused by unscrupulous businesses such as them.
@ Anonymous – we’ve had this conversation many times here. If you have something relevant about ICANN’s whois study plans, please add it here. Otherwise you can comment on DT in the previous thread a few months ago.
Quote –
“They are such abusive cowards that on their own site they list no name or address for their company or management”
It is no secret who is behind DomainTools.
It use to be Jay Westerdal but he sold his company to the parent company of Trafficz which is run by Ammar Kubba.
Everything you have said has been said many times before.
I would suggest you save your energy for the next round of companies advertising your whois data.
For example, DNW announced Godaddy is planning to take our whois data to another level. (search last week)
Speaking of relevance, running an ad for this company in the same post as talking about whois abuse, I think, qualifies as relevance. And don’t assume any visitor knows your whole history. I read a lot of things in my life, but I have not read your WHOLE blog, therefore did not realize my anger was late and faux-pas-ish. ICANN ignored my complaint about Domaintools.com, heck, they didn’t even acknoledge it, so their study plans seem mild and too little too late for me.
@ Anonymous – ICANN’s study only has to do with spam, phishing, identity theft.
Thank you, Domain Investor. Does anyone know Ammar Kubba’s home address and home phone number? I would like to make sure they are available on Google just like he makes my name and home address available to everyone without my consent. In fact, I would like to publish the name and home address of everyone who profits from Domaintools.com.
Anonymous,
Your registrar supplied the information.
You should be angry with your registrar.
You also have other options on whois data.
1. You could put it in a blind corporate name.
2. You could use a P.O. box not in your postal zone.
3. You could use private whois.
Plus, there are other things you could do.
I would be more concerned about the companies like GoDaddy who plan to take your data to the next level.
@ Anonymous/DomainInvestor – I wouldn’t blame the registrar. They’re required to provide the information. But you can do any of the things Domain Investor suggests above to shield your personal information, should you choose.