Larry Seltzer wrote: > >>what is the purpose of Whois information? > > It's an e-mail and postal mail database for spammers
That's not really a big concern these days, given all the other sources of equally good (and much better) address information (such as local addressbook harvesters in all the millions of spam-bots out there). Whois contact information was intended as a "fix" for when the net grew past the point that if you saw Host A repeatedly doing something naughty not only didn't you know who to contact about it to get it fixed, but you couldn't easily get your colonel to bitch at his colonel to get it fixed. All further slumming down of the net to the rancid sewer it now is follows from subsequent moves to weaken/reduce/remove that incredibly limited remaining form of collective responsibility, on which the whole stupid thing is built. If you're not prepared to put some reliable, accurate contact information up for public perusal you're not worthy of connecting a machine/domain/etc to the net. If you think "reducing your own received spam" is more important than the bigger picture issue of controlling _all_ net-nastiness then you _really_ are not worthy of connecting a machine/domain/etc to the net and we should be suspicious of your worthiness to that DSL/cable connection too... Regards, Nick FitzGerald _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
