"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" -Juvenal
I. NARALO Q&A - This is an opportunity for At-Large and members of the community to pose questions directly to ICANN Staff concerning Compliance issues.
- Question from At-Large Members concerning unsolicited domain sales marketing: The Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) has a special provision prohibiting the use of WHOIS record data for "commercial advertising or solicitations." The Chair has been receiving multiple complaints from At-Large members concerning deceptive marketing of domain purchases or transfers from unknown "registrars" sent to the contact address in their WHOIS. In one example "Asian Domain Registration Service in China" sent a notice to a domain owner falsely claiming the domain owner's trademark was being used in domain purchases and that the domain owner should purchase the domains with "Asian Domain Registration Service in China" to avoid their trademark from being abused. This is in fact a well documented scam. In a second example an At-Large member and domain owner received several emails claiming a similarly named domain string was pending sale should be re-registered through the linked service. In one email the service was called "Ourbestnames" in another it was called "Jackdomains" with the actual service being called "Active Domain (Re)Sale." The business address posted for these services is 2710 Thomes Ave Cheyenne WY which is widely documented as being associated with shell companies and fraud. The name of the entity behind these services is "Great Value Domains LLC ." No records have been found so far validating the existence of "Great Value Domains" in California, Nevada, Delaware or Wyoming. There is zero transparency on their sites as to which Registrar they resell for. According to RAA 3.12.3 "Reseller shall identify the sponsoring registrar upon inquiry from the customer," but an email to their contact address was returned with the message "Recipient address rejected: User unknown in virtual alias table." Our specific questions for ICANN Compliance are as follows:
A. How and Where can members of the community report violations of 3.12.3 and 3.3.5?
B. How and Where can members of the community monitor the status of such complaints?
C. What is ICANN Compliance doing to handle such clear abuses of the registration system? - Question from At-Large Members concerning Registrar responsibility for abuse handling: It has been reported to the Chair that a member attempted to report a phishing email to the sponsoring Registrar and was referred to the domain reseller who rejected the complaint out of hand.
- Question from community member concerning repeated access to DNS by known abusers: QUESTION: Over the past two years, one researcher, tracked and documented more than 6,000 phishing and cybercrime related emails from the SAME DOMAIN and IP ADDRESS OWNER. (During 2011, about ONE every SIX minutes) They reported this block owner and registrar 23 times to the "NIC" complaint reporting system that ICANN set up. (ICANN refers all complaints to these forms) The system says : "we will respond in 45 days" When the response comes back 45 days later, it says that "No problems have been detected" and to "click" on the link for more info. The link goes back to the original form and starts over. QUESTION IS : Can ICANN demonstrate that their system has had ANY positive effect on cybercrime use of ICANN issued and approved IP blocks ? If so : WHY has the SAME cybercrime cartel been allowed to use the SAME IP blocks, and registrar to register hundreds of NEW domains over a period of TWO YEARS... continuing as we speak TODAY? (FS)
- Question from community member concerning illicit use privacy services: 1) does the whois privacy services, that almost always are used to cover spamming registrant, are legal? (registrant data must be clearly shown in whois port 43 ... somewhere is written) 2) How can normal users (but also knujon) has access and check the real registrant data to check if they are real of clearly fake?
- Question from community member concerning the validity of privacy services:
- Question from community member about abuse occurring within ccTLD domains:
- Concern from community member about perceived intimidation by ICANN Staff:
II. Review of Compliance Newsletter
