AL-ALAC-ST-1219-03-00-EN

ALAC: DNS Abuse

Description:

It has become increasingly imperative that the ICANN Community step up to address the challenge of DNS Abuse in its many forms. The implementation of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has driven an increase in the incidences of DNS abuse, as it has become severely problematic to leverage WHOIS
and/or other parts of the DNS for the purpose of identifying bad actors and mitigating abusive behavior. Increases in abuse are well documented, and DNS Abuse has not gone without community notice.

ICANN Org has facilitated at least three separate discussions on DNS Abuse in 2019, and a major cross-community discussion on the topic took place during ICANN66 in Montreal. As the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) recently said about the importance of addressing DNS abuse, “Protecting the public from security threats and DNS Abuse is an important public policy issue.”

According to the review of the last round of new TLDs by the Consumer Competition, Choice and Trust Review Team (CCT-RT), the safeguards put in place during the last round were not effective, and the compliance operation within ICANN does not have the necessary mandate nor probably the ideal tools to combat DNS Abuse effectively. Discussions continue about how to define DNS Abuse, but there are also settled consensus definitions that could be employed for immediate reform. Once tools are in place, a change in definition will only change the scope of how these tools are used. An explicit mandate for ICANN Compliance is needed not to regulate content, but to exercise enforceability against DNS Abuse.

STATUS UPDATES