Then you agree with Randy in that, there is no way to prevent whois contact mining if the data is out there. So it now becomes a question of what do we want more, contact info for tech use, or privacy from spam. That's some choice. <sigh> I always thought the role accounts were a good partial answer (especially where the EU privacy issue is concerned), Pre-pay is another. Note that hostmaster addresses do not get spammed much anymore (it's a sure fire way to get the account nuked). Another restriction could be to throttle whois to *only* tech contact info, without a court order. At 04:59 PM 3/23/99 -0800, Derek Balling wrote:
On Tue, 23 Mar 1999, Roeland M.J. Meyer wrote:
Yes, this can be circumvented, but it would cost a lot more than the $70 for a domain registration. In addition, the whois server would know exactly who is mining the data and would be able to track them, even if they spread it out over months.
Unless you're planning on enforcing passwords for contacts then I don't think it'd take all that much to SIMULATE a client, choosing random people from the whois database, and blaming other people for your whois queries. An even more intelligent system would use the tech contact for the LAST result as the requestor for the current one so that there would be no visible pattern.
The source code for the client is going to be out there, so people will figure out how it works, reverse engineer a version that uses a forged, but existing, tech contact, and go on with their day.
D
====================================================================== Derek J. Balling | "Bill Gates is a monocle and a white dredd@megacity.org | fluffy cat from being a villain in the http://www.megacity.org/ | next Bond film." - Dennis Miller ======================================================================
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