New worring changes will affect Website owners privacy

Currently when you buy a domain name you already have to load in your correct details to the hosting provider. Then you can select to have your detail anonymous adding a good shield of protection between you and scammers, fraudsters and the website admins favourite spammers. Even though .com.au domains and similar don’t offer this protection often your friendly web developer will scraffice their details for your sanity.

Old ICANN is now proposing to force domain owners to have their details made public through the whois lookup service. Additionally, it wants to stop commercial websites from using proxy registrations.

This essential gives anyone access to the website/domain owners details, which can include phone, name, email and address. A great start for a scammer and putting all domain owners at greater risk. Privacy advocates, such as EFF also agree that the loss of Anonymity exposes domain and website owners to a higher threat level. While Hackers and spammers are the more common problem with your average website owner. There are also risks from persons or groups who disagree with a point of view illustrated on the website or domain name, such as; wistleblowers, religious ideals, race, gender blogs just to name a few.

While a person would still be free to own and post what ever they wish on their website. The idea a group of angry villages could find out where you live with a simple Google search would give most people pause be fore doing so. Therefore restricting their rights to free speech in a sense.

Two nefarious and opposing groups will likely profit from this action if it goes through. Spammer, scammers and hackers will have easier access to valuable target details and secondly Copyright protectors, such as; Time Warner and Disney will be able to threaten and harass you directly without having to go through ISPs for details and providing some just cause.

The usual advocates for this action are the movie and music industry heads. Who are happy to forsake everyone elses rights and privacy so they can chase down the latest downloader of Tailor Swift from the Pirate Bay.

I know forsure if this action goes through I might as well through my phone in the bin and set 99% of all incoming mail to go straight to junk. Already our phones ring off the hook from hundreds of foreigners pushing scammy web, banking, credit, insurance, FX trading services.

In response one of our domain name clearing houses and partners (namecheap) has said people should email ICANN with their views. Regardless of what happens we will continue to shield our clients from having to have their details public.

At the moment, if you want to register a web address, you must provide your contact details. However, many domain registration services allow to keep this data private by providing their own contact details for Whois queries, which are the directory look-ups for web addresses.

If you are interested in protecting your online privacy please contact us directly info@mebsites.com.au

Bibliography:

Anonymity for Site Owners May End. (2015, June 26). Retrieved June 27, 2015, from http://extratorrent.cc/article/4365/anonymity for site owners may end.html

Malcolm, J., & Stoltz, M. (2015, June 23). Changes to Domain Name Rules Place User Privacy in Jeopardy. Retrieved June 27, 2015, from https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/06/changes-domain-name-rules-place-user-privacy-jeopardy

Hayes, K. (2015, June 20). SAVE DOMAIN PRIVACY – Tell ICANN not to expose WHOIS data! Retrieved June 27, 2015, from https://blog.namecheap.com/save-domain-privacy-tell-icann-not-to-expose-whois-data-2/