Re: [ga] scammers using whois privacy

["kidsearch" <kidsearch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I agree Dana and you are right that in some cases it might make sense, such 
as you mentioned political sites, etc. But what about websites that cater to 
children? I don't want my children drawn to websites where the whois info is 
hidden. Someone catering to children and wanting to remain anonymous is a 
problem. No ecommerce websites need to hide the whois info unless they are 
scammers in my honest opinion.

I'm not saying everyone who uses the privacy feature is a scammer. I'm 
saying I don't believe owners of ecommerce websites should or need to hide 
that information. I too check whois to see who I am doing business with. Now 
I will personally be more at risk when doing business online due to policies 
that allow scammers to hide their identity. And I'm not alone. The decision 
to allow this practice puts millions of users at risk.

It protects the scammers and the spammers. One of the reasons cited for 
being able to hide whois info was to curb spammers from using the info to 
spam domain owners. But what purpose it really serves is to help spammers 
hide their identity.

Chris McElroy aka NameCritic
http://www.articlecontentprovider.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dena Whitebirch" <shore@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "kidsearch" <kidsearch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "ga" <ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, December 30, 2006 8:36 AM
Subject: Re: [ga] scammers using whois privacy


> Chris,
>
> I also respect someone's right to privacy and believe that there are valid 
> reasons for whois information to be private/anonymous in many cases 
> (particularly personal sites, political opinion sites, etc.)
>
> In the case of commerce sites, however, I get a mental picture of someone 
> going to a 'seedy' part of a city and going into a dark storefront with no 
> name of the business to be found over the door.  To me that is as 
> frightening online as it would be offline.
>
> Personally I experienced a situation with a popular/well-known site that I 
> went to which ironically had all kinds of large notices all over the site 
> warning people to not try to defraud them and how they checked each 
> transaction thoroughly before completing it.  Since the site was popular, 
> without thinking a lot, I made a purchase there.
>
> In their zealousness to prevent themselves from being defrauded, there was 
> at least a 12 hour delay in their 'checking' and at about this time I 
> became concerned so did a whois lookup thinking I might contact them. 
> Their whois information was anonymous and there was 'no' contact 
> information for them on their website at all!
>
> The transaction was in this case finally completed but I have chosen not 
> to do business with them again entirely based on the anonymous whois.  I 
> also check whois now before making any online transaction and have simply 
> personally boycotted commerce sites that do not wish me to know who I am 
> doing business with.  The logic escapes me 'why' someone would want to 
> hide their company/business contact information particularly if they're a 
> legitimate business.
>
> -Dena Whitebirch
> http://quasar.net
>
> On Fri, 29 Dec 2006, kidsearch wrote:
>
> > I love advocating for privacy, however if you have a domain name and you 
> > are on the public
> Internet, the whois info should be public in my opinion.