[council] Regarding links between the display of email addresses in WHOIS and general SPAM

[Bruce Tonkin]

Hello All,

Just a comment to provide some balance.

I have often heard registrants state that they receive SPAM to their
email address because it is published in the WHOIS.   This may well be
true, however it is worth noting that a person's email address is often
available from many other Internet sources.

For example the email addresses of Council members are publicly
available at:
http://www.gnso.icann.org/council/members.shtml

Whenever you post to this list, your email address is publicly
available.

Whenever you post to any online Internet forum your email address can be
harvested.

Likewise many phone numbers displayed in the WHOIS are readily available
online from the online telephone directories.

So WHOIS is not the only source of email addresses used for SPAM.

I suspect that most general untargeted SPAM (e.g offers for enlargements
of parts of ones body, financial scams etc), does not originate from
WHOIS.

Where I can definitely say that WHOIS has been harvested is when the
unsolicited marketing messages relate to the context of WHOIS and domain
names.  The most common example is domain name renewal notices sent to
the postal address displayed in the WHOIS along with the expiry date.
Or when a domain name is registered, and the registrant is phoned the
next day noting that the domain name has been registered, and asking if
the registrant would like to get web hosting services.

Regards,
Bruce Tonkin
Registrars rep to GNSO Council