OT: Network Solutions Threatens Your Privacy

From: Patrick Rigney <patrick_at_evocative.com>
Date: Thu Jan 8 15:14:39 2004

I'm a little steamed. I just received an email from Network Solutions
offering me a valuable new service: protection of my domain registration
information from spammers. For the cost of just $5, my WHOIS contact
information will be hidden so it can't be scraped by spammers and doesn't
appear in the lists and exports they routinely create from the whois
databases.

A couple things about this really piss me off. First, NSI doesn't say
explicitly, but it obvious during "checkout" on their site, that the cost is
$5.00 PER DOMAIN. If you are, for example, like me, a designated technical
contact for hundreds of domains that my customers register (often without my
knowledge, even), then the annual cost of preserving my privacy is
staggering.

Second, NSI claims on the "product" information for this "service" that
"ICANN requires this personal information to be available for anybody to
view on the web." If that is the case, then how is even possible for them
to charge me to not make my personal information public.

This "service" seems like a gross abuse of the collected data and a complete
breach of any ethics with respect to the handling of personal information
associated with a domain registration.

Am I being unreasonable about this?

Patrick
Received on Thu Jan 08 2004 - 15:14:39 GMT