[Fwd: zone transfers, a spammer's dream?]

Thu Dec 9 16:59:33 UTC 2004

--On 09 December 2004 10:24 -0500 Rich Kulawiec <rsk at gsp.org> wrote:

> The irony of all this is that spammers already have all this information
> -- yet registrars have gone out of their way to make it as difficult as
> possible for everyone else to get it (rate-limiting queries and so on).

They clearly don't "already have" this information, or they wouldn't
be
a) offering to pay people for it
b) continue to be trying to obtain it by data mining.

Your argument is roughly equivalent to "The irony of this is that drug
dealers already have drugs -- yet governments have gone out of their
way to make it as difficult as possible for everyone else to get them".
Or "Credit card fraudsters already have credit card numbers - yet
credit card companies have gone out of their way to make it is
difficult as possible for everyone else to get them".

IE sure, there's a lot of leaked information out there (often including
personal data), that doesn't mean responsible registries should add
to it.

Note also that responsible registries do provide query access (automable
where necessary) to registration data in a variety of different ways;
not all make it "as hard as possible" for others to access it.

I will leave it to the reader's judgment to work out which registries
come under the category "responsible".

Alex