False WHOIS Data Still Bedevils — This situation is untenable.
The database holding the contact information for registered domain names is still plagued with inaccurate entries, a problem that’s the root cause for much of the Web-based trickery on the Internet.
A November report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), published Wednesday, shows 5 percent of all domain names ending in .com, .net and .org have “patently false” data in the fields where contact information is stored, such as e-mail addresses, phone numbers, names and mailing addresses.
Since the US Post office have turned themself around but have lost market share they might be open to a related side venture. They handle names and addresses all the time. Could they verify registrants?
Excuse me:… “No that one is for my neighbor and that one is the same number 2 streets over, yea the rest is mine.”
Back: On seckond thought maybe it is not such a good Idea.
…Yea what was I thinking they invented junk mail.
They should start disabling sites that have false information. Put them in a holding queue for one month, if nothing is heard make it availible for purchase again. People don’t understand that it’s critical for other system administrators to be able to track down the owner and technical contacts for any given domain.
What about privacy? Providing an e-mail address is fine, but I don’t want to give out my exact mailing address.
You should probably reconsider having a website then. In the alternative you could use a re-mailing service or one of the “privacy guard” features offered by the registrars. The point is that if someone needs to contact you either the re-mailer or registrar can facilitate that, if you just give false information no one can.
Everything about getting a domain name is crap. Anybody else out there have a domain stollen from them by their host, so it could be sold to a higher paying customer that wanted it? Of courseyou could sue, but to pay a lawyer a thousand dollars to get your domain back? They figure it’s not worth peoples time, and they’re right. We need a free, and effective, means of having a claim heard with punishment for a hosting company’s misuse. Till then, don’t use a clever name unless you know your site will be popular….. Little guy beware
I’m with zabba. I have a few domains and they have my correct name, city, state, zip, and e-mail address. However, I do NOT include my street address and phone number. I don’t want my phone number out in the wild like that. If you need me, e-mail me. I already get spam because of the e-mail address.
Here in Canada we do not have the ‘do not call list’. As soon as I registered my domain I started getting phone calls (6 of them in total, so far) from companies like aplus.net offering me hosting. And the people on the phone are total idiots too (I tell them I’m currently playing $140 for a dedicated server and they respond with “Great News! APlus can give you the same thing for $0.99!”). Argh.
I know it’s not the fault of the domain registry system — it’s more of a fault of the telemarketing laws here in Canada. Unfortunately, just like with e-mail spam (many people never post their real e-mail addresses online in public locations), I just may have to start faking my WHOIS info.