North American Network Operators Group

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RE: APNIC Privacy of customer assignment records - implementation update

  • From: Matthew Kaufman
  • Date: Thu Sep 23 18:56:56 2004

The truth is, it doesn't even need to be a case of "grandma" listed in the
whois (though that is a legitimate issue these days). If as an ISP, I list
"Bob's Flower Market" (which has a DSL line and IP addresses for every cash
register and order-fulfillment machine) in whois, all that does is:

  A) Cause "Bob's Flower Market" to get spam at the address harvested from
whois, and
  B) Cause people who have issues with virus-infected machines to call Bob
(who doesn't know jack about viruses) instead of calling me (I can remotely
shut him off until I can drive over there with a CD full of anti-virus
software), and
  C) Gives my competition Bob's name and phone number, so they can try to
sell him their DSL service instead. (Imagine the response if you asked any
other local business to post their complete customer list, with the names
and unlisted phone numbers of buyers, on the front door)

What it does NOT do is:
  1) Reduce the amount of virus traffic accountable to Bob (might make it
worse, if people call him instead of me), or
  2) Reduce the amount of spam in the world (probably increases it, at least
from Bob's point of view), or
  3) Make the world a better place to live (there's much better avenues to
pursue if that's your goal)

Matthew Kaufman
[email protected]