ICANN Studies Secretive Domain Owners 101
alphadogg quotes from a Network World piece reporting on ICANN's study of the prevalence of proxy services that shield registrants' personal information from WHOIS queries. "Approximately 15% to 25% of domain names have been registered in a manner that limits the amount of personal information available to the public... according to the preliminary results of a report from ICANN... Domain owners who want to limit the amount of personal information available to the public generally use a privacy [proxy] service. ... [Proxy services] register domain names on behalf of registrants. The main objective of ICANN's study — which was based on a random sample of 2,400 domain names registered under .com, .net, .org, .biz, and .info — is to establish baseline information to inform the ICANN community on how common privacy and proxy services are." Spammers and other miscreants abuse the ability to register domains by proxy, in order to avoid being found; but ordinary users have a legitimate interest in keeping their personal information out of the hands of those same bad actors. What's the right balance?
Re:Don't hide. (Score:2, Interesting)
Network Solutions is now pushing its customers to make their info private when they renew.
My boss recently renewed our domain and happily told me about how they made his info private for only a few dollars more.
He was under the impression that this would keep away hackers and spam... when i told him what he really paid for he was pretty annoyed.
Re:I just want my e-mail protected (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm the same way. The address that I used for my domains got so passed around from spammer database to spammer database, that I ended up just having the forward of the account go to /dev/null. So, the few domains I have are done by proxy, and the E-mail that is the contact does not get 5000 emails for your usual crap a day, not to mentional the occassional threat by a spammer to use usernames as From: addresses if I don't pay some guy with e-gold within 3 days.
Re:Don't hide. (Score:2, Interesting)
If you want a domain, you will have to stand that you are public.
If you want to hide your personal information start a company and register the domain on the company.
I let my "privacy shield" accidentally lapse on my domain. Keep in mind the type of information that is listed on a WHOIS LOOKUP. Let me post and censor mine
[Querying whois.internic.net]
[Redirected to whois.srsplus.com]
[Querying whois.srsplus.com]
[whois.srsplus.com]
thedomainthatiamcurrentlyusing.com
Registrant:
MyFirstName MyLastName (myprivategmailaddress@gmail.com)
1234 MyHomeAddress, Apartment X
Raleigh, NC 27607
US
N/A
Domain Name: thedomainthatiamcurrentlyusing.com
Administrative, Technical, Billing Contact:
MyFirstName MyLastName (myprivategmailaddress@gmail.com)
1234 MyHomeAddress, Apartment X
Raleigh, NC 27607
US
N/A
My usage: I use my domain name for no-ip dyndns service. When registering a domain, you have to provide a valid address. I get snail-mail from people using my whois information (the last one was from some other company trying to get me to transfer my domain to them).
There are plenty of uses for a domain that are not commercial. "go start a company" is not a logical solution to the problem.
Re:100% anonymous! (Score:5, Interesting)
I copied this idea from Microsoft.com and put: Administrator, Domain
as my name for my small business site.
Sometimes I even get physical mail with "Dear Mr Domain Administrator..."
Maybe its un-intetnional. (Score:4, Interesting)
Reputation (Score:1, Interesting)
If you claim to be a reputable business as a payment facilitator on the Internet, don't hide behind a proxy service for your domain name.
A few days ago, I was looking at epassporte.com for a virtual credit card. I ignored them when a lookup on their domain showed they are hiding behing Moniker Privacy Servies.
namecheap (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny thing is, I called up namecheap to verify they were legitimate before registering with them and their answering machine gave me the impression that it was a one-man operation. I'm curious if they really are.
In contrast, I used to intern for a business that did register with their real contact information. Besides getting fax spam and e-mail spam, we also got a scammer who used Sprint TTY to try to get us to order 6 laptops through Dell and mail them to New Jersey.
The purpose for whois contact info has changed (Score:5, Interesting)
Way back when technical contacts used to use whois data to call each other when there was a problem. Domain contacts were people that actually knew something about networking or system administration. Today this use is pointless. The typical domain owner doesn't manage there network or the systems hosting their web pages. What it mutated into was ICANN helping trademark owners or MAFIAA organizations being able to more easily sue people.
Note that some of the CCTLD owners haven't been strong armed into signing away their authority to ICANN yet and keep contact info out of whois. For example tonic.
Re:100% anonymous! (Score:1, Interesting)
Looking at the fine Act linked above, the felony provision seems to apply to incorrect registrant contact info for web sites that violate a copyright or trademark. Does that penalty apply to somebody hiding their true contact info for a non-infringing site? Better ask a lawyer, but I'd say "No." Domain registrant proxy services have not been lawyered out of existence, which supports my theory. (Doesn't it?)
Re:100% anonymous! (Score:3, Interesting)
When I registered a domain for my small company, I used out-of-date address information and haven't updated it in a decade. The only accurate information is the (Hotmail) email address so I can change the DNS server addresses if necessary.
If anything ever comes of it, I can just say, "Oh, yeah, forgot to update that..."
There's no need for my contact information to be made mandatory by law. All countries have stupid laws on the books... this is one for the U.S.A.
Why did they even bother? (Score:3, Interesting)
So what they think they are accomplishing by studying obfuscated domain registration data now, I would like to know. Because soon the vast majority of all WHOIS data in the world won't be worth crap or even have consistent or meaningful requirements.
Part of me wonders if this "study" is just a preliminary step towards them eventually selling all the rights to
Re:Maybe its un-intetnional. (Score:3, Interesting)
Until the domain gets popular enough and there comes a disbute between you and the host.. Domain ownership is solely based on that information.
The right balance is no privacy. (Score:2, Interesting)
I already have no privacy on the web. If my government decides they want to eavesdrop on my communications through my ISP, they already do it without a warrant.
If I have no privacy, nobody should have any.
I say everyone who hangs a shingle (domain) on the web site should be accountable for it and their names a matter of public record.
Re:Maybe its un-intetnional. (Score:3, Interesting)
That depends on the quality of the ISP. Some will just do the transfer. Others will auto-renew you at an outrageously high annual rate, then refuse to transfer the domain until you pay the balance. That is, they will hold the domain hostage.
The cheaper the hosting, the more likely they will hold your domain hostage if you try to leave.
Proxy for privacy (Score:3, Interesting)
As a network administrator I feel that proxy services should be prohibited.
If my customers are having a problem reaching your web site, then I use whois to find the person to contact to resolve the issue. This is necessary more often than you might thing due to routing issues. I can call my upstream ISP if the problem is on their end, but if not you may need to contact your ISP so that the problem can be worked on from both ends.
Any domain not listing the actual contact information for the individuals responsible for the domain should be dropped from the db. There are other ways to handle contacts which would not require emails to be displayed. It's that simple. Whois information identifies the mailing address for the registered owner of the domain, and the full contact information for the technical and administrative contacts. For most cases that should be the domain administrators at your hosting company. If you opt to place your own information in those fields, then your information should be made available.
More importantly ! (Score:3, Interesting)
a lot of people use those proxy services in order to shield their personal data from their repressive governments in other countries. a proxy in u.s. will not give out data to random repressive country # 2318765, when they ask for the details of the dissenter that is running a blog. its very important for people who live in less civilized countries, for making a stand and changing things.
Re:Maybe its un-intetnional. (Score:2, Interesting)
I work, occasionally, for a small ISP and we have quite a few people who's domains we "own". We charge them about $10 a year extra to handle registration tasks and such.
Lots of people figure that $10 is a bargain.
If and when they want to change hosts we transfer them to the new host in whatever manner the customer desires. It's called customer service. If you as a company rip someone's domain off they'll tell 30 or 40 people a year about their bad experience.
If you as a company provide someone good service they will mention that good service and sometimes even come back to you, which some of them have.