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Whois Studies

Update

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Recent Developments

•Final two GNSO-commissioned Whois Studies just completed – on Whois Privacy & Proxy Abuse; and Whois Misuse

•Final Reports took into account all public comments received; both Final Reports were published on 18 March

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NPL’s Privacy & Proxy Abuse Study:

•"A significant percentage of the domain names used to conduct illegal or harmful Internet activities are registered via privacy or proxy services to obscure the perpetrator's identity” - TRUE

•"The percentage of domain names used to conduct illegal or harmful Internet activities that are registered via privacy or proxy services is significantly greater than the percentage of domain names used for lawful Internet activities that employ privacy or proxy services." – ONLY PARTLY TRUE

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And:

•"When domain names are registered with the intent of conducting illegal or harmful Internet activities then a range of different methods are used to avoid providing viable contact information – with a consistent outcome no matter which method is used.

•However, although many more domains registered for entirely lawful Internet activities have viable telephone contact information recorded within the Whois system, a great percentage of them do not.”

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CMU’s Whois Misuse Study:

Public access to Whois data leads to a measurable degree of misuse - TRUE•Types of misuse observed to be statistically significant: email, phone & postal spam

•Other types of misuse (e.g. DDoS attacks, malware) not observed to be statistically significant

•For email misuse: statistically significant correlation with gTLD type; also, cost of domain name and anti-harvesting mechanisms

•For phone misuse: statistically significant correlation with gTLD type (but no relationship with domain cost or anti-harvesting)

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Next Steps

•GNSO Council to consider: (1) implications of findings from GNSO studies on ongoing Whois policy work; (2) possible next steps for Whois studies/policy work generally

•Possible questions:

- Are there specific findings that are useful to current GNSO policy work (e.g. PPSAI & T&T WGs)?

- Are there areas/issues not covered by the studies that would be useful to measure, and for what reason?

- Is there a need for the GNSO to continue with Whois studies given recent initiatives (e.g. EWG)?

- How does the GNSO work fit into this broader work?

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Questions

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Annex

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• 2007: GNSO Council resolves to study various aspects of Whois to obtain comprehensive, objective data to inform future policy efforts; community input sought on appropriate topics

• 2009: GNSO Council directs staff to conduct feasibility studies on selected topics

• 2010-11: GNSO Council proceeds with selected Whois studies and surveys

Background

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Studies/Surveys on:

•Whois Misuse (CMU Cylab)

•Whois Registrant Identification Study (NORC/U. of Chicago)

•Whois Relay & Reveal Pre-Feasibility Survey (Interisle Consulting)

•Whois Privacy & Proxy Service Abuse (NPL/Clayton)

•Whois Service Requirements Survey (community)

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Further Information

• All the GNSO Whois studies, including links to Final Reports and public comments: http://gnso.icann.org/en/group-activities/other/whois/studies

• Whois Privacy & Proxy Services Abuse Final Report: http://whois.icann.org/sites/default/files/files/pp-abuse-study-final-07mar14-en.pdf

• Whois Misuse Final Report: http://whois.icann.org/sites/default/files/files/misuse-study-final-13mar14-en.pdf

• Archived (prior) GNSO Whois policy work: http://gnso.icann.org/en/issues/whois/archive

• Expert Working Group on gTLD Data Directory Services: https://www.icann.org/en/groups/other/gtld-directory-services

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