List Archive (Was: Re: p2p, anonymity and security)

Bruce Dawson jbd at codemeta.com
Fri Mar 12 12:06:02 EST 2004


On Fri, 2004-03-12 at 11:01, Kenneth E. Lussier wrote:
> However, I think that the posting of the whois information was not only
> unnecessary, but completely inappropriate to the discussion. 

And *I* think it was entirely appropriate given the context of the
discussion. Whois information is publically available - just like your
voting information, property tax info, EIN (if you're a corporation),
...

> It does,
> however, bring up a good point that is currently being debated: How
> public should the whois database be? Does anyone really need to know
> where Derek lives? Should it be common knowledge that Travis is in
> apartment 4T? And, more importantly, why was all of this information
> made to be public to begin with? 

As a system administrator, I want to know the person responsible for any
given IP address that connects to any of my systems. This is a "check
and balance" that the internet community (ISPs and backbones, mostly)
agreed to at the inception of the internet - back when it was split from
the Arpanet.

> Even the most simple minded can look up
> whois data and abuse it.  And anyone with malicious intent can take it
> further and use that information for harassment, or more nefarious
> things. 

If you don't want to be bothered, then there are lots of ways to make it
more difficult to get hold of you. For examples, try to find the "person
responsible" for yahoo.com, microsoft.com (actually, this one is rather
humorous), ...

> So, mailing lists aside, just how much privacy are we *FORCED* to give
> up to participate in this whackey little thing that we called the
> internet? And who decides what amount of lost privacy is ok? 

As soon as your start participating in society, you start giving up
privacy. If you don't agree with that statement, then our definitions of
privacy differ - and that's an altogether different topic and this is
NOT the forum to discuss it.

--Bruce

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