ICANN: .WeScrewedUpAgain

Group publishes private details of new top level domain applicants.

During the ICANN press conference on Wednesday a reporter stood up and asked if ICANN had told applicants that their email addresses and phone numbers would be published.

Yes, was the response. Something to the tune of “we told everyone this would be an open process”.

But only some of this information was to be published. Certainly not the home addresses of the applicants, which apparently were published on some applications.

Kevin Murphy of Domain Incite notified ICANN about the screw up today, and ICANN has reacted by temporarily blocking access to viewing the applications.

I know ICANN has a huge war chest of cash to fight lawsuits, but I didn’t realize it was so eager to get its first one of the program.

So first we had the application system taken offline for over a month because applicants could view other people’s file names. Then the digital archery test system had a “display” issue that had to be fixed. Now the group inadvertently published private details of some of the applicants.

And each time it was a community member who noticed the problem and let ICANN know about it.

Making matters worse, one commenter says they told ICANN about the problem 24 hours before the applications were taken offline.

I wonder if the ICANN staffers responsible for this will get their usual fat bonus this year?

Of course they will.

[Update: online access to applications has been restored.]