[registrars] Lawmakers Domain name oversight too lax CNET News.com

[Rick Wesson]

Ross,


> On 9/5/2003 10:09 AM Elana Broitman noted that:
>
> > Please note the pressure on ICANN to require more whois verification mandates.
>
> I'd be interested to hear more about the efforts of these special
> interests groups to increase the accuracy of phone books and other
> similar compilations.


There are two main kinds of subscriber phones in north america, POTS
(plain old phone system) and cellular. When purchasing a cell phone most
(not all) vendors require a credit check which in turn requires a social
security number.  The name and address are verified along with a drivers
license and/or a social security number against one of the three national
credit reporting agencies.

There are two types of credit checks, permissible purpose and
non-permissible. Most often permissible purpose are used which require a
signed contract allowing a credit check. Credit scoring organizations
(equifax, equiserv, and TRW) all have extensive fraud detection.

POTS lines are physicly delivered to a physical address. If the address
does not exist its hard to get someone to deliver a line to it. If you were
able to get a line to a non-existent address you wouldn't be able to get
your bills delivered there either. It is hard but not impossible to get a
phone line in an alias (not your real name) in the US but you have to get
other supporting documentation in the alias before your phone.

Since POTS lines are tied to the 911 emergency system there are federal,
state, and local laws governing address normalization and fairly
sophisticated mapping and direction services tied into the system for
emergency response and law enforcement to get to the correct address.

Names are easier to lie about than addresses with POTS systems. Another
issue is that the systems to report on name/number mapping for both POTS
and mobile numbers in the US are slow to import change data. Often lagging
for several months. These white pages services often have a churn of 10 to
18 percent of subscribers so a lot of name number mappings are out of
date.

My last point is that there are zero IPR issues with name/number mappings
in the PSTN. While I've enjoyed explaining data accuracy issues in the
subscriber side NANP (north american numbering plan) the analogy between
PSTN subscriber data accuracy has zero correlation with IPR issues in
internet naming because there is no intrisic value in the number maping.
PSTN number/name mappings are more like reverse DNS than the forward DNS.
There is little value in a string of digits for a subscriber phone line
thus no IPR issues.


best,

-rick