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User Group Net Spam Cop Network
June 14, 2008
First, Knujon has released the findings of their spam registrar research which found 70 "ghost" registrars dealing in domains.
[Quote] We have found 70 registrars listed on the Internic registrar directory missing street addresses and/or phone numbers. More serious are the following registrars that do not even have the country of location listed: EvoPlus Ltd., Hecta Media, Inc., Hostgator.com LLC, OnlineNIC, Inc., Thought Convergence, Inc., and Verelink, Inc.
These registrars seem to be violating ICANN's own regulations -- in fact, these registrars should never have been allowed to be registrars without this information in the first place. Knujon has reported these but ICANN is very slow in regulating them and bringing them to compliance. Knujon states:
[Quote] The full disclosure of registrar location and ownership is a considerable issue considering the recent revelation of Scott Richter’s involvement in registrar Dynamic Dolphin. This situation raises serious concerns about how effectively the consumer is being protected on the Internet when the infrastructure is controlled by unknown persons at undisclosed locations.
See the full report.
Knujon has also compiled some rather striking information on which registrars are most guilty of harboring illicit web sites. They have posted the 10 Worst Registrars in an article which specifically points out who the offending registrars are. All have been reported to ICANN who seems to be looking the other way. You can read the full report here.
The most convincing evidence that ICANN continues to act as accomplice in criminal activities can be found in a recent report from ScanSafe.com. This article reflects on a new outbreak of SQL injection attacks started on June 8th which emanate from domains which had been previously suspended -- which registrars have now released back to the attackers. Wouldn't it seem rather odd that registrars would suspend domains because of criminal activities and then turn them back on again a month later?
To us, this is simply not acceptable. Why would the population of the internet continue to allow the whole domain naming system to be governed by ICANN. It has become painfully obvious that there have been no moves to stop or even slow down the proliferation of criminal use of registrars, domains and the DNS system.
As we pointed out last month, ICANN could easily stop the bulk of this abuse by simply ending the "Domain Tasting" program, or at least modifying it to weed out the criminal element. Refusing to act on this suggests they either simply don't care and aren't really interested in fulfilling their mission -- or somehow, they are indeed accomplices in illicit activities.
Either way, ICANN has betrayed the public trust, and needs to be hauled in and over-hauled.
Thanks for reading...
Fred Showker, Editor: DTG Magazine. Contact me.
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