[arin-discuss] Privacy of Reassignment Information

[Bill Van Emburg]

> Date: Sat, 8 Apr 2006 19:09:00 -0700 (PDT)
> From: "william(at)elan.net" <william at elan.net>
> 
> The reality is that ip whois is rarely used for spam target harvesting 
> (but not never and doing so is not illegal or against arin policies) and
> when it is, that is mostly to send service offers to ISPs, ASPs and other 
> companies with presence on the internet. 

Umm...  Tell that to the spammers sending me several hundred spams via 
my Arin whois info every week....
You sure they aren't just being filtered before they get to you?

Also, ARIN *does* have policies against running large numbers of 
individual queries, and if you get the bulk data, you have to sign a 
contract prohibiting use for spamming, among other things....

> 
> BTW - for people who worry about privacy and phishing may I remind that 
> your tax records are in fact public information (at least in US), what do 

Umm...last I checked, you can't just walk into the IRS offices and ask 
for a random person's tax return, even with the person's tax ID. 
Mortgage companies, accountants, and others I've dealt with have needed 
a signed form from me before the IRS would help them out.

Are you sure about this?

-Bill Van Emburg