ARIN WHOIS for leads

Wed Jul 31 17:17:16 UTC 2013

On July 31, 2013 at 08:00 jay at west.net (Jay Hennigan) wrote:
 > 
 > It's surprising how people go out of their way to deny that it's a sales
 > call, and then start trying to sell something.

[NOTE: The anecdote is followed by some practical advice]

<ANECDOTE>

I had a guy call and tell the person who answered he was my brother
and there was a family emergency.

I don't have a brother.

I said put him through. He began a sales pitch.

That was quite a few years ago, he probably still talks about what
jerk I am and if so I am proud of it!

</ANECDOTE>

<ADVICE>

THAT SAID, beyond personal tastes, in this context there's really only
one substantive complaint:

Telemarketing info is PAID FOR, particularly in a ready to use list
form.

If they're scraping WHOIS etc for free that's a problem.

Lists can be protected by intellectual property law against such
abuse.

The usual method is to insert "ringers" which would be info which
points back at non-existant people with valid-looking contact
information.

If for example they called a phone number, or several, owned by ARIN
(or a service they employed) asking for James T Kirk or Diana Prince
then that would be a problem and should be logged.

One obvious response is to just bill them a reasonable telemarketing
list rental fee for the entire database and go from there.

Believe it or not this is well-trod ground, people steal or abuse
(e.g., resell w/o permission) telemarketing and mailing list info all
the time.

</ADVICE>

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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