[ppml] Policy Proposal 2004-6: Privacy of Reassignment Inform ation

[Jon Lewis]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, william(at)elan.net wrote:

> There have been very very very few cases of abuse of reassignment information
> by one isp to get customers of another ISP. If it was a widespread issue,
> it would get reported on this and other lists - but ask yourself if you
> even know of one case?... So if it was widespread abuse, maybe then it
> would have been worse it to consider such a widescale privacy policy, but
> it really is not an issue.

I know of sales people who used the .com zone (back when anyone could get
just download a copy) to specifically target domains serviced by other
providers.  That's not quite an abuse of whois, but with whois it's even
easier...just ask ARIN for all of an ISP's swips.  But, who cares?  Does
Sprint get upset and ask for your number to become unlisted when MCI cold
calls you asking you to switch LD providers?

Sales/marketing is predatory at times.  That's no excuse to throw out the
current whois system.

As for those who would abuse the current "Private Residence" loophole
opened by 2003-3 (I've seen /23 Private Residences while tracking down
where spams came from), whether that's one big residential customer (which
I find hard to believe) or a pool of them, don't be shocked when people
start rejecting email from an entire Private Residence block due to spams
from one or more IPs within it...since you're basically saying in whois
that it's one customer.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Jon Lewis                   |  I route
 Senior Network Engineer     |  therefore you are
 Atlantic Net                |
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