On 12 Mar 2004, at 11:01am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > It does, however, bring up a good point that is currently being debated: > How public should the whois database be?
A good question. > Does anyone really need to know where Derek lives? Absolutely. Derek, for starters. But I'm not so sure that information needs to be in the public WHOIS database. FWIW, I know for a fact that the information in that WHOIS record is just about completely obsolete. Derek doesn't even live on that *continent* at this time. There is also, I think, a distinction between a private individual and a company or organization. It might be reasonable to require a company to expose their contact information in a domain name. But then the issue becomes, who decides (and checks) which is which? > And, more importantly, why was all of this information made to be public > to begin with? Because when DNS was invented (circa 1984, IIRC), everyone trusted everyone on the Internet, and it was important to have contact information available for technical reasons. It was more then a decade latter before abuse of WHOIS became a serious concern. Today, many registrars and registries give registrants control over what information they expose. > So, mailing lists aside, just how much privacy are we *FORCED* to give up > to participate in this whackey little thing that we called the internet? It depends on the type of "participation". > And who decides what amount of lost privacy is ok? We all do. If you, for example, feel that the exposure in registering a domain name is and must be too great, you have choices. Seek an alternative registrar/registry/TLD. Take steps to hide your identity. Or simply do not register a domain name. -- Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do | | not represent the views or policy of any other person or organization. | | All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
