ICANN issued report on WHOIS inaccuracies

[Frannie Wellings]

ICANN's report:
http://www.icann.org/whois/wdprs-report-final-31mar04.htm

Excerpt from report:
Summary

This report has provided a statistical and narrative summary of
experiences with the operation of the Whois Data Problem Reports
System at InterNIC.net. That system is designed to provide a
streamlined, centralized interface for the submission of reports to
registrars concerning Whois data inaccuracies. ICANN-accredited
registrars are obligated by the terms of their accreditation
agreements to investigate and correct any reported inaccuracies.

*

Over the course of the eighteen-month reporting period (Sep-02
through Feb-04), the system received 24,148 confirmed Whois
inaccuracy reports.
*

82% of the reports concerned domain registrations in .com, and .net
and .org accounted for 13% and 5% of all reports respectively. An
enhanced version of the system has recently been launched that will
include not just the legacy gTLDs, but all gTLDs under contract to
ICANN: .aero, .biz, .com, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, .net, .org,
and .pro.
*

More than 40% of all the reports (9,938 out of 24,148) were submitted
by just 0.3% of reporters (20 individuals out of 5,755 reporters).
Over 20% of the reports had text fields that included the word "spam".
*

The number of complaints sent to each registrar was generally
proportional to each registrar's relative market share.
*

On average, registrars were each sent approximately 0.00048 Whois
inaccuracy reports per active registration per year, which equates to
an average of 4.8 reports per year for every 10,000 domains under
management.




In the press:

Spam Responsible for Most Whois Complaints

http://www.cbronline.com/currentnews/d5f719e335583c4f80256e6900385792
By Kevin Murphy

Spammers trying to hide their identities are believed to be the main
cause of people complaining about inaccurate Whois data, according to
a report published yesterday by the Internet Corp for Assigned Names
and Numbers.

Whois databases store the names, phone numbers and email and physical
addresses of people who register domain names. Registrars are obliged
by ICANN to keep accurate records, and they in turn oblige their
customers to keep their data clean.

But Whois works largely on the honor system. Registrars generally do
not check at the time of registration. As a result, many people
prefer to give inaccurate data, either for legitimate privacy reasons
or to cover up illicit activity.

ICANN said yesterday that over 20% of the approximately 24,000
confirmed complaints about inaccurate records that were received
between September 2002 and February 2004 mentioned "spam" in the text
of the complaint.

Complaints from intellectual property owners were also believed to be
behind a portion of the reports, but it was not possible to extract
the exact percentage from the data provided, according to an ICANN
spokesperson.

The report also notes that just 20 people were responsible for more
than 40% of all complaints received, almost 10,000 complaints between
them over the 18 month period (on average, almost one complaint per
day for each of the 20).

Complaints about spam were also responsible for some of the
inaccuracy reports that were filed inappropriately, ICANN's report
indicated. At least 8%, likely more, of the reports were complaining
about something unrelated to Whois accuracy.

In some instances, reports complained about the spam itself, even
though the Whois contact information was accurate. In one case, a
registrar found itself dealing with someone who habitually reported
spam to the registrar.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that some registrars are more prone to
having spamming customers that others, but ICANN's report said that
complaints about inaccuracies are roughly proportional to the market
share of the registrar.

Unsurprisingly, .com addresses accounted for the largest share of
complaints, at 82%. The .net and .org domains came in second and
third with 13% and 5% respectively. New domains including .info and
.biz will be included in future ICANN reports.

ICANN published the report to fulfill one of its commitments under
its memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the US Department of
Commerce, from which it derives most of its powers over the
internet's addressing systems.




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Frannie Wellings
Policy Fellow, Electronic Privacy Information Center
Coordinator, The Public Voice
1718 Connecticut Ave. N.W., Suite 200
Washington, D.C.  20009   USA
wellings at epic.org
+1 202 483 1140 extension 107 (telephone)
+1 202 483 1248 (fax)
http://www.epic.org
http://www.thepublicvoice.org
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