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

[william(at)elan.net]

Michael,

Do you believe it is appropriate for phone companies to publish phone
books with everyone's name and phone number and with their address?

Now when you order a phone line, the phone company would at the end ask
you if you want the phone number made public or not (they did every time
I ordered lines which is 3 times for residences so far). I'm arguing that
the same should be done for ip addresses and that ISPs during provisioning
process should give an option for users to decide if their information
is to be entered in whois without ISPs making a decision on their
behalf using some kind of ARIN "recommendation".

Now - note that for ip addresses we're not talking about everyone being
listed, it already only applies to users who get enough ip space to
qualify for reassignment listing and most of these are not novices but
usually those who ask for multiple static ip addresses run some kind
of network operation at home and often enough with public internet
presence using their dsl line (be it for-profit small business or 
some non-profit user activity).

BTW - All these listings are typically of not much use for "SPAM hunters" 
as spammers are really not going to provide their real addresses for 
public database if they have a choice (and residential privacy policy 
gives this choice), nor is the spam coming from dsl lines is really
from the users who actually ordered these lines (its all zombies).
There is however certain value that can be obtained from this
information for statistical purposes to determine grown rate of
internet use in specific area.

On Mon, 24 Oct 2005 Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com wrote:

>>   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
>
> _______________________________________________
> PPML mailing list
> PPML at arin.net
> http://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/ppml