RE: What about unauthorized registrations? Re: [gnso-rap-dt] Updated document and wiki pages

["Frederick Felman" <Frederick.Felman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rod - It is great idea and thanks for this.  I think that your idea is good for 
criminal abuse of the domain name system but does not address the bulk of 
registration abuse by percentage which includes brand rights own abuse. 

Applying this idea will be effective for criminal abuse, especially if the 
registrar is a bad actor. However, for all the legitimate registrars there is 
already a strong incentive not to take registrations from fraudulent 
cards/payments.  Registrars most often are not paid for fraudulent 
registrations.  And, adding insult to injury, they incur ICANN and Registry 
fees for the registration. 

Moreover, I'd bet that the bulk of all abusers including brand and other 
criminal activity use valid cards/payments for the bulk of brand abuse because 
they can actually make "legitimate" revenue from ads and affiliates on sites 
registered.  I'd bet the folks at retail registrars like Demand Media/Enom or 
some of the registries could tell us about registration cancellation 
percentages due to financial fraud to tell us the exact scale.

With respect to account takeover, that's being addressed by SSAC and others 
directly.

While the form of registration abuse you've identified is new to this group and 
remediation will help mitigate some financial fraud, it doesn't help brand 
rights owners for the other forms of abuse. 

Consequently, please lets not dismiss other abuse just yet.

- Fred

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-gnso-rap-dt@xxxxxxxxx on behalf of martinsutton@xxxxxxxx
Sent: Sat 7/11/2009 2:47 AM
To: Rod Rasmussen; gnso-rap-dt
Subject: Re: What about unauthorized registrations?  Re: [gnso-rap-dt] Updated 
document and wiki pages
 
Rod,

Prevention rather than cure - that's a novelty :-)

I like your thoughts on this Rod. 

It would be useful to get some metrics on this to illustrate the scale of the 
problem and how it affects Registries and Registrars. I fear that in isolation, 
these may not appear significant and are absorbed within costs of doing 
business, whereas combined data would show a more worrying picture. 

Make sure you get out in the sun more often...

Kind regards,

Martin
 
Martin Sutton
Manager, Group Fraud Risk and Intelligence
Ph:  ++44 (0)20 7991 8074
Mob:  ++44 (0)777 4556680
Sent from my BlackBerry

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----- Original Message -----
From: Rod Rasmussen [rod.rasmussen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 10/07/2009 15:48 MST
To: gnso-rap-dt@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: What about unauthorized registrations?  Re: [gnso-rap-dt] Updated 
document and wiki pages



So perusing this list again, it struck me that we've done a great job  
capturing what potentially abusive things people are doing with  
domains they do register, but not how they're actually registering  
them, outside of perhaps front running and a kind of "side effect"  
abuse of false whois data.  I could argue (but won't get drawn into  
that with this post) that the other two "registration" abuses we have  
listed are really post-registration abuse (mis)use (cybersquatting,  
inappropriate use of whois), as that's where the harm is really felt.

The thing we're missing is the use of stolen/fraudulent credentials to  
obtain the registration in the first place!  This is the enabling  
force behind all (other than really stupid) criminal abuse of the  
domain registration process.  A criminal will use one of three methods  
to obtain a new domain name: a stolen credit card/bank/payment  
account, a fake financial instrument (card, check, transfer), or  
unauthorized access to someone else's domain management account.  If  
you kill this problem, most of the criminal uses of fraudulently  
registered domains (i.e. post registration abuse) disappear.  There  
are certainly many methods out there to use to verify the authenticity  
of the domain applicant, screen fraudulent credentials, score  
transactions, and the like.  That seems like a very fruitful area of  
pursuit to putting a real dent in all domain abuse issues to me.

Soooo...  am I just missing something here, or should we make this a  
major part of the work of this group - how to curtail the abuse of the  
domain registration system by people registering domains using stolen/ 
unauthorized credentials?  Seems to me that's certainly an abuse AT  
THE POINT OF REGISTRATION and it directly affects registrar and  
registry operations at that time, and will affect everyone else in the  
food chain eventually.

Just food for thought on a beautiful Friday afternoon.

Cheers!

Rod

On Jul 10, 2009, at 3:52 AM, Marika Konings wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> As discussed on our last call, I have updated the definitions  
> document to add a category to capture the discussion on potential  
> recommendations (see attached). I have also added this column to the  
> relevant wiki pages. In addition, I have moved the comments and  
> notes related to the abuse definition discussion to a separate wiki  
> page (see https://st.icann.org/reg-abuse-wg/index.cgi?abuse_definition) 
> , to focus the document on our current discussion.
>
> With best regards,
>
> Marika
>


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