[gnso-rds-pdp-wg] Dangers of public whois

[allison nixon]

>>So you are saying that none of this spam are not originating from whois
harvesting?

Do you understand how spam emails are harvested? WHOIS is one source of
emails, and there are many other sources of emails that are subsequently
fed into botnets, "lead lists" et cetera. Shutting off the spigot for one
source of emails is unlikely to make any significant impact in the volume
of spam you, or the average person will receive. And if the email WHOIS was
deliberately disclosed by a company or person, that e-mail will also be on
their website and will still be spammed. The only category of people who
would be harmed exclusively by this WHOIS status quo are people who made a
foolish mistake and didn't intend to disclose something publicly.

It's a far more effective solution to start an investigation against these
scammers that send emails and snailmail to registrants making false claims
about their domain expiration. That should have happened years ago,
honestly.

>>So since that is only a small part of the problem as you state it then we
shall not do the effort to reduce it as a part of the change we want?
>>I am trying to understand the viewpoint and the argument for letting
public whois info being used to generate spam and scams as less important
here

Because the anti-abuse community are simply members of the public. There
appears to be a low level of respect given here for the efforts of that
community, so I have a corresponding low level of confidence that continued
access to this data will be allowed.



On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 12:50 PM, benny at nordreg.se <benny at nordreg.se> wrote:

>
>
> > On 14 Feb 2017, at 18:39, allison nixon <elsakoo at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > You stand alone in that opinion. Spamhaus is not perfect but they are
> the most widely used blocklists among network operators. The amount of harm
> prevented by Spamhaus's block lists eclipses the harm prevented by
> registrants receiving WHOIS spam. It is like comparing the size of the sun
> to the size of an ant. If you have ever tried to operate from
> infrastructure that's on Spamhaus's block lists, your access to the
> Internet at large will be very poor indeed.
>
> So you are saying that none of this spam are not originating from whois
> harvesting?
>
> >
> > How many of you people actually have day to day experience in fighting
> spam and preventing the massive privacy invasions that happen on a daily
> basis to innocent people?  I am getting the feeling that this group badly
> needs to gain some perspective. WHOIS spam is a problem and is an
> annoyance, privacy is important, but this group keeps talking about WHOIS
> privacy and completely ignoring the fact that by volume such a scheme would
> cause great harms for mostly imaginary gain. To me this shows a sign that
> many of the arguments here are about idealism without practical experience.
>
> So since that is only a small part of the problem as you state it then we
> shall not do the effort to reduce it as a part of the change we want?
>
> I am trying to understand the viewpoint and the argument for letting
> public whois info being used to generate spam and scams as less important
> here
>
>
> --
> Med vänliga hälsningar / Kind Regards / Med vennlig hilsen
>
> Benny Samuelsen
> Registry Manager - Domainexpert
>
> Nordreg AB - ICANN accredited registrar
> IANA-ID: 638
> Phone: +46.42197080
> Direct: +47.32260201
> Mobile: +47.40410200
>
>


-- 
_________________________________
Note to self: Pillage BEFORE burning.
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