Re[2]: [ga] WHOIS policy primer

[Greg Burton <sidna@feedwriter.com>]

Examples of times when I have needed to get in touch with a domain
owner:

1. Receiving virus infected e-mails from a user of a domain.  Yes, I
can /dev/null the e-mails, but I want the account cleaned up -- the
ISP is not going to do that, the owner of the domain will.

More likely that the hosting provider will be able to handle it than the 
domain owner, and MOST likely the enduser who is sending it will. If it's a 
hosted domain and email, the domain owner is going to call the isp/hosting 
provider in a panic - why not cut out the middleman?

2. DNS mis-configuration issues.  If I run across a problem with a
domain name, I need to have an address I can contact to help correct the
problems.

Ditto. If you think most domain owners have a CLUE what dns is, you're 
sadly mistaken. Nor do they provide their own DNS in most cases.

3. Spam, I always try to contact the owner of a domain before
contacting their ISP.

At least half the time spam comes in with forged headers. The IP address 
(if available) is the only way to track it back. And if spam is coming from 
an unsecured sendmail instance then (in your case of shared hosting) the 
ONLY way to actually stop it is for the isp/hosting provider to get in and 
fix it - the domain name OWNER is most likely powerless.

Let's deal with a recent case I'm familiar with in the sendmail situation. 
Thousands of pieces of spam were being sent (using unsecured sendmail) with 
forged headers, and with at least 100 DIFFERENT reply addresses at terra.es 
. How long would it take to identify EACH address and write the owner of 
terra.es (a rather large corp, as I recall), and then how long would it 
take to deal with the spam? Much easier to contact the admin at the IP of 
the suspect sendmail, and get him to fix his program. 1 email = over 100 
addresses blocked IMMEDIATELY, thousands (literally) of undeliverable 
messages, and another server cleaned up (until the next go round), so no 
future spam through it in theory.

Regards,
Greg

.....who has to deal with this stuff regularly

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