Re[2]: [ga-sys] Territorial approach to privacy issues

["William X. Walsh" <william@userfriendly.com>]

Hello William,

Wednesday, June 13, 2001, 9:50:25 PM, William S. Lovell wrote:

> Nonsense, William.  The companies have no business gathering
> the information in the first place.

> Oh, and by the way, I have just stolen your car. Would you like it
> back?  Our enlightened "opt-out policy" permits that, you know,
> through our kind and generous grace.

I love this absolutely ludicrous analogies.

They do so much to support your position.

The DO have business gathering the info, Bill.

If you don't feel that a business has a basis for collecting contact
information from it's customers, then you must be on a different
planet than the rest of us.

A production company was doing some filming in a local shopping mall
(commercials).
The mall posted notices at the entrances that filming was occuring and
that all those who entered were subject to that filming.

You could of course opt-out, by not entering the mall.

It is entirely the businesses right to decide what requirements their
customers must adhere to do be customers of that business, and that
can most certainly include (And in fact does include) that their
contact information for their domain names will be publicly available
information.  The whois service, and the registration agreements, are
in substantial compliance with the EU rules already. The only
modification is an explicit notice that the user has a right to decide
not to have their information shared by not registering a domain name.

The type of thing Joanna is pushing is the kind of thing that if the
CONSUMERS show a concern over, then the industry will drive out a
solution for them.

In thinking about the best way to handle a "Domain Agency" service, I
came up with a very easy and low cost way for a company to offer this
kind of agency service.

1) Telephone contact
A single phone line (or multiple lines using multiple modems and
busy call rollover) into a computer programmed to be a voice mail
service.  Each user is assigned an extension number.  (this
number would be a number local to the agency, not a toll free number,
since toll free incoming calls would make the cost prohibitively
expensive to offer)  Voice messages left in these mailboxes are
converting into a digital format (mp3 or wav for instance) and emailed
to the address on file for that user with the domain agency.

2) Email
An email address is given to the user in the form of
uniqueidentifier@customers.agencyname.com  Emails sent to that address
generate are quarantined and not delivered immediately.  The sender of
the message received an auto response with a unique coded URL which
they must visit to authorize the delivery of the email address.  The
email is then delivered to the user's email address on file.  The
IP Address and other identifying information on the sender are stored
and included in the message when it is delivered to the user.  The
quarantine and approval process helps to eliminate the system being
used for spam, or by those who do not provide valid return addresses,
thus minimizing abuse.  Abuse of the system can be reported to the
service, which can takes steps to minimize abuse by that sender in the
future.

3) Postal Mail
A unique box # is provided to add to the end of the postal address for
the service.  As a part of the contract, the user provides explicit
consent for the service to open and review any and all mail sent to
that address, and to discard all bulk/advertising related mail.  All
other mail is scanned and stored.  The scanned copy is emailed to the
user, and the original can be mailed to the user upon payment of a
processing fee.  The user agrees that the maximum non-unsolicited
commercial mail received for any user will not exceed xx pieces per
month, and that a service charge of $x.xx will be accessed on the next
billing period for each excess piece.  Essentially the service fee
includes processing of up to xx pieces, and the excess is billed to
the user on a per mail basis.  Stored hardcopies are kept on file for
no more than 90 days.  At 60 days a notice is sent to the user that
the mail piece is pending destruction within 30 days.

See how easy it would be to come up with solutions that still satisfy
the needs of the public for access to the information, and the ability
for a private individual to maintain their own privacy through a
privately run service, rather than unnecessary public laws?

If there was enough demand for such a service, trust me, they would
start popping up.


-- 
Best regards,
William X Walsh
mailto:william@userfriendly.com
Owner, Userfriendly.com
Userfriendly.com Domains
The most advanced domain lookup tool on the net


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