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« He's a War Hero, NOT a Post-War Hero | Main | Secrecy, Lies and Legislation » February 16, 2004Anonymity At RiskDo you publish a blog or website at a domain name you registered? Are you an entrepreneur who plans to start a business, and you'd like to have a website - but you don't want all your personal information made available to spammers and online fraudsters? Then you need to pay attention to a bill pending in Congress called the Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act, or FOISA... It proposes to increase prison sentences by up to seven years in criminal cases if a domain owner provides "material and misleading false contact information to a domain name registrar, domain name registry, or other domain name registration authority" and then uses that website to commit a crime.But it doesn't just target online crooks - it would force domain name registries to verify when you register a domain name that you gave the right name, the right address, etc. And, of course, that data sits in the Internet's WHOIS databases, which are easily accessed by spammers harvesting email addresses. (Indeed, Google was recently forced to discontinue a WHOIS search tool that made it even easier to search the database. Now, some in Congress want to force you, if you register a name for a website, to fill the database with information that could expose you to harm.) The crazy thing is, the bill isn't needed. There's a proposed technological upgrade that could solve the needs of law enforcement while protecting your privacy and anonymity rights. But the people empowered to make it happen ... aren't. Read all about it here. Posted in Internet & Technology
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Is anonymity a right? Should it be? Posted by: dave at February 16, 2004 08:07 PMMy opinion on this is..oh, wait, there seems to be someone knocking on my front door. I'll be back in a min...... Posted by: SemiPundit at February 17, 2004 02:26 AMI disagree. WHOIS information has never, ever been private, and the registrars were always required to have accurate contact information. The new technological proposals sound interesting, though I'm not sure how the access would work in practice. But frankly I don't see any need for privacy that isn't already satisfied by other methods, like using an anonymizer company to register and hold the domain name on your behalf. I'd maintain that a domain name ownership is essentially public information, like property records. Yeah, you can maintain a certain level of anonymity if you really try, but you can't stop people from noticing where you live. There's no inherent right to be anonymous when you're operating in public. Posted by: Bryan C at February 17, 2004 03:49 PMI own a few domains and I use my registrar's "private domains" feature, which registers my domains in the name of a 3rd party company (domainsbyproxy.com) but I still retain complete control over the domain. They can still disclose my info if there is legal action related to the domain, but at least my WHOIS info is protected from everyday net-wackos who might want my name, address and phone number. It's an extra $9 annually- well worth it in my book. Posted by: dave at February 18, 2004 07:40 AMPost a comment
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