RE: [registrars] Motion for a Vote on Grace Period Deletion Fee

["Jay Westerdal" <jwesterdal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>> One has to wonder when specious reasons are advanced in support of a
>> proposition.  For example, someone mentioned phishing.  As someone who
earns
>> part of his living investigation and shutting down phishing attacks on
>> behalf of a major bank, I just have to scratch my head and wonder at that
>> one.  Phishing attacks typically involve using a bogus text label in an
http
>> anchor.  More often than not, the href field is either an IP address or a
>> free webhosting site.  Looking at whois data for a domain registration as
>> part of a phishing investigation is a waste of time - as if the data
would
>> be valid in any event.

John,
There are registrars out there that register other people's marks for this
5 day fishing trip. Is it phishing? I am not sure it is phishing but it is
fishy. The registrar I pulled this data from only registered these domains
for 1 or 2 days. And yes, it set off alarms. Even if this registrar was only
planning on fishing and not phishing with these doamins the corporations
with
the marks have to be on alert and ready for a real attack.

| GOOGLE-CNET.COM                          | 2005-05-30 |
| YAHOOALOGINS.COM                         | 2005-06-01 |
| BANKOFAMERICADEBTCONSOLIDATION.COM       | 2005-06-03 |
| BANKOFAMERICAMERCHANTACCOUNT.COM         | 2005-06-03 |
| VERISOONWIRELESS.COM                     | 2005-05-29 |
| VERISIGNNSI.COM                          | 2005-05-28 |

This practice should not be free.

Jay Westerdal
Name Intelligence, Inc.
http://www.nameintelligence.com  

-----Original Message-----
From: John Berryhill [mailto:john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Saturday, June 04, 2005 8:20 PM
To: Nevett, Jonathon; Jay Westerdal; registrars@xxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [registrars] Motion for a Vote on Grace Period Deletion Fee


>  If ICANN starts assessing this fee on
> all such names, we may see the Transaction Fee reduced from 25 cents
> much sooner than Kurt mentioned on the budget call yesterday.

No.  You will simply see the volume of registration/deletes, along with the
rate of residual registrations, go down.  No one who is going to test 1000
names that *might* net a subset of names earning $100 in traffic revenue is
going to pay $250 to do that.  Unfortunately, this fee, proposed by
registrars on a system that is demonstrably profiting the registry, is not
being proposed on the basis of any familiarity with the actual economics of
what is going on.

One has to wonder when specious reasons are advanced in support of a
proposition.  For example, someone mentioned phishing.  As someone who earns
part of his living investigation and shutting down phishing attacks on
behalf of a major bank, I just have to scratch my head and wonder at that
one.  Phishing attacks typically involve using a bogus text label in an http
anchor.  More often than not, the href field is either an IP address or a
free webhosting site.  Looking at whois data for a domain registration as
part of a phishing investigation is a waste of time - as if the data would
be valid in any event.

Also, if churning the same names is actually happening, then surely someone
has a list of observed names that have been the subject of this practice,
and the name of the responsible registrar.  If not, and I'm perfectly
willing to believe that someone might be doing this, then I have to believe
that someone is making up facts.  Otherwise, imposing a fee on the basis of
hypotheticals and rumors leads me to wonder what the "problem" really is.

It seems that the real reason for this motion has not been posted here.
Real reasons are supported by actual facts and figures.