ICANN - Mike Gill Says Respect Our Privacy

[Mike Gill <mike_gill@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

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 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. 

WHOIS private services are the only thing at the moment protecting users from 
WHOIS Spam with some of it even containing Malware and scareware. Spam by email 
isn't of course the only way it affects us the ICANN customers because certain 
scrupulous domain companies send letters by mail urging people to renew their 
domains. However they often leave out important details like they are not the 
company you originally registered with and that the price they will charge will 
be a lot more with them. I do understand customers want to feel protected when 
using websites but they always have that right not to use websites if they 
don't display their business address on the actual site itself. Without WHOIS 
privacy services protecting our addresses and email details it would leave us 
open to attack with nobody protecting us the domain holders and actual ICANN 
customers. If these privacy services are forced offline then as an ICANN 
customer I would therefore politely request that ICANN does more to protect us 
and our personal information from companies that harvest details from WHOIS 
listings and set out to target vulnerable people. Website users have always got 
the option of avoiding to use certain websites and with browser plugins 
alerting them to more and more dodgy websites these days. They in my opinion 
are currently a lot better protected than domain name owners who have to 
display a lot of their personal information on an open public service such as 
WHOIS. 

Private information should be kept private. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Mike Gill

Sent from my Windows Phone