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 matthew@eeph.com