[alac] Whois Task Force 3 report

[Vittorio Bertola <vb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Whois TF3 (the one that deals with accuracy and verification of registrants'
personal data) also had a workshop in Rome. You may find captioning here:
http://www.icann.org/meetings/rome/captioning-whois-tf3-03mar04.htm

In short, a brief report on task force activities was given - basically, two
questionnaires were sent out, one to ccTLDs and one to companies who sell
services online, but almost no answer was received, partly for lack of
interest and partly because some companies did not want to disclose their
business practices. Then we had a presentation from the .ca TLD, where they
talked about their verification mechanism - they apparently screen all
registrations one by one and require further evidence of the registrant's
identity in about 20% of them. (They possibly are the only one to do so, and
they are facilitated in this by the fact that they only accept Canadian
registrants.)

We made a couple of points during the debate - Thomas pointed out that if
the plausibility of registrant data is controlled tightly, the only likely
result will be a sharp increase in cases of identity theft, and there's
nothing that can tell between real identities and plausible/stolen ones. I
pointed out that those who want to hide their data (either for privacy or
for fraud) will always be able to do so, and that the task force should
rather focus on mechanisms to make it much easier for registrants to keep
their data updated when they want to do so - currently most inaccuracies are
due to lack of easy ways to keep data updated.

Today the TF had one of its regular conference calls. It was confirmed that
by March 19th the TF expects to receive constituency statements, and Ross
Rader was given the task to start preparing an initial draft for the final
report. In the meantime, some efforts will be undertaken to recontact the
companies that were surveyed and to ask them to provide replies to the
questionnaire in a confidential way.
-- 
vb.               [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<------
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