At 2/27/03 7:46 AM, Chris M wrote: >I am tired of all my customers being "mined" by the various big name >asswipe registrars out there. And I'm going to do something about it.
Me too. I've been planning something for a while that I just haven't got around to, so I'd be interested in hearing from OpenSRS as to what meets the requirements, but legitimately keeps the domain ownership in the customer's name without jeopardizing their rights. (All this would be with the end-user's consent, of course). >So I'm just trying to nail down what that is that still complies with >guidelines. Would it be OK to: > > 1. List our mailing address (PO Box) but the customer's name? Yes, I'd like to do this. We'd simply discard everything that wasn't registered mail. Leaving the domain in the customer's name is important in case they ever need to communicate with OpenSRS to get their password if you go out of business, for example. > 2. Provide a centralized email address that the customer doesn't normally >read, or that bounces? I don't think you want it to bounce; if the customer wants to transfer to another registrar, for example, it's not okay to block the message. A better idea seems to be a rotating scheme where the WHOIS e-mail address is updated every two weeks with a new address that's valid for one month, but bounces after that time. So if someone uses the WHOIS e-mail, it will work for 2-4 weeks -- but if they put the address on a "millions of addresses" CD and sell it to spammers, it won't work later. (It appears most spammers don't harvest the WHOIS themselves; they get it from a list some other idiot harvested a while ago. I frequently get spam sent to WHOIS addresses that haven't been used in years.) >It seems like with these two things customers won't receive deceptive >"offers" from other companies. I also plan to list a special telephone number, which will simply play a recording saying "The owner of this domain name does not accept telemarketing calls, sales calls, or calls from Domain Support Group. If you need to contact us for other reasons, please call our main number at..." I suspect the number of legitimate calls we need to refer to the customer will be zero. -- Robert L Mathews, Tiger Technologies "Mandingo, how I grok your mouth music."
