On Tue, 16 Mar 2004, Milton Mueller wrote:

> 5. Fifth, the best way to stop abuse of port 43 is to get data that is
> valuable to spammers out of the public Whois database. Data that is in
> Whois will be accessible to lots of people; therefore, privacy concerns
> require getting data out of Whois or reducing access to it for all. This is,
> of course, a matter for Whois Task force 2, dealing with data elements.

  Indeed the problem is that the data elements useful to the spammers
are those also useful to the general public.
  Access to the Whois database could be restricted, say to only those
in the list themselves like the technical contact persons. I can foresee
the time though when someone in the list would start providing
others access to the list.


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* Horacio T. Cadiz    | Open Source. No Gates. No Windows.  *
* hcadiz AT ph.net    | It is Open. No Bill. It is Free.    *
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*       Philippine Network Foundation, Inc (PHNET)          *
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