[gnso-rds-pdp-wg] [For Background] APWG report on phishers use of Domain Name System

[Andrew Sullivan]

Hi,

On Wed, Jun 28, 2017 at 06:26:10AM -0500, John Bambenek via gnso-rds-pdp-wg wrote:

> I understand that several people have concerns about the privacy of
> registrants in whois. What I don't feel gets sufficient appreciation
> is that having access to whois data helps investigate and PREVENT
> large security and privacy risks.

I appreciate this point, but I think we need to take care not to
equivocate on "privacy" here: there are two different privacy issues.
One is the privacy of the registrant.  The other is the privacy of
people who are affected by malware.  The privacy of each is important,
but it's not apparent that we can trade one person's privacy off
against the protection of another's.  More broadly, it is not obvious
that the privacy of one who is _not_ a malicious registrant may be
traded away in order to protect some other person against the actions
of a different (malicious) registrant.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com