[gnso-rds-pdp-wg] Documented case of individual being doxxed as a result of WHOIS

[John Bambenek]

Point in fact, I want to emphasize the key phrase here and the problem, “They were not aware that this data was public.”  It isn’t a problem that whois is public, its a problem that the registries spend no effort to educate their consumers about what is done with their data and how to make informed decisions. As someone adequately put it a few weeks ago “we don’t think that’s our job”. 

The problem here is corporate responsibility. 

She got a barrage of harassing tweets. Well, Twitter in general doesn’t think civility is their job either so misuse of that service probably wasn’t addressed.

The entire internet is made up of layers of providers who believe in some measure that security, anti-abuse, consumer safety et al is not their job. They have outsourced that to people like me and others on this list who largely do it for free when the reality is the “not my job” attitude prevents these problems from being addressed at the most logical layer. Instead it has to be done by me. 

The problem is and always has been corporate responsibility. 

And if you think this exact same thing won’t happen in any gated whois model, you are grossly naive. 

--
John Bambenek

> On Oct 14, 2017, at 05:10, Ayden Férdeline <icann at ferdeline.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi, all-
> 
> According to this series of tweets on Twitter, earlier this week the website Feminism in India "published an article criticising Hindu festivals & how they are misogynist for women". They advise that "some troll ran a http://whois.com check on FII's domain and found [the domain name registrant's] name, home add & mobile no. This started a barrage of Islamophobic tweets & an innocent person suffering & being doxxed. Horrible horrible situation." They were not aware that this data was public.
> 
> This, sadly, is another example of the existing WHOIS protocol being used to shame, anger, or scare an individual with the objective of suppressing speech. As we work on fleshing out definitions of purposes this week, I thought it was important to share this story, because it shows very clearly the implications of personally identifiable information being misused with the objective of causing emotional, and/or physical harm.
> 
> Many thanks,
> 
> Ayden Férdeline
> linkedin.com/in/ferdeline
> 
> 
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