[ppml] Technical error was ( Regarding private residence... )

>   When registering residential customers, ARIN recommends the phrase
>   "Private Residence" for the address. ISPs should provide the
>   person's name, city, state, postal code, and country to complement the
>   private residence designation.

There is a technical error in this recommendation. 
It assumes that by replacing the street name and
number with the term "Private Residence", that ARIN
is providing some privacy for residential customers.
This is simply not true.

For example, go to this page:
http://www.westminster.ca/index.html
and enter the postal code "N2L 3A7" and then click
the circle labeled "lookup this address". You will
see that this postal code refers to odd addresses
on Central Streeet, Waterloo, Ontario in the range
35-43. In other words, either 35, 37, 39, 41 or 43.

What privacy is provided to a residential customer
when their home location is pinpointed to an accuracy
of within 5 possible houses? I believe that the US
full zipcode provides similar pinpoint accuracy.

If there is no intent to enable people to knock
on someone's door, then there should be no address
at all in the ARIN whois database.

To date, nobody has given any good reasons for why
end user contact information is in the ARIN whois 
directory. The desire of SPAM hunters to shakedown
innocent people in the hunt for spammers, is not
a good reason.

I support the requirement for network operators
of all sizes to be listed in the whois directory, but
non-technical end users who are not in charge of 
operating any network, should not be in this directory.
The ARIN whois directory is not an Internet phonebook!

Any addresses used by non-operator customers of an
ISP should be traced back to the ISP, not to the non-operator
customers.

--Michael Dillon