Proposed Whois changes

[Dave Watkins <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear ICANN -

Regarding the proposed rules governing companies that provide WHOIS privacy 
services (as set forth in the Privacy and Policy Services Accreditation Issues 
Policy document)

I run my business from my home, like many others, and exposing all whois data 
means that all personal info will be publicly available for all to see online. 
Plus it will open us up to an immense amount of telephone, email and postal 
spam. As it stands anyone can already contact us through the domain registrar 
so exposing the whois data won't help anything. Plus any criminals are no doubt 
using fake details anyway so this just penalises the legitimate users amongst 
us and has no effect on the people it's meant to stop. It also makes it much 
easier for scammers to scam people as due to the need to verify your domain 
when it's transferred/expired etc, scammers can look at the whois data and send 
fake verification messages to those that have just expired/are about to expire.

I urge you to respect internet users' rights to privacy and due process.
- Everyone deserves the right to privacy.
- No one's personal information should be revealed without a court order, 
regardless of whether the request comes from a private individual or law 
enforcement agency.

Private information should be kept private.

As the body responsible for domains i truly hope you make your decision based 
on what is best for the free internet and privacy as a whole and not on the 
interests of a few large commercial entities.

Thank you.

Dave Watkins
+44 (0) 208 133 6090
+44 (0) 7956 331 293
dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

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