[anti-abuse-wg] WHOIS (AS204224)

In message <0F2494D8-D060-4496-807A-ABBE30D264F0 at gmail.com>, 
(in response to Sascha Luck)
Suresh Ramasubramanian <ops.lists at gmail.com> wrote:

>I doubt -
>
>1. You are being asked to code this for RIPE NCC
>...

For the record, I agree completely with Sascha Luck on this one.

CAPTCHAs are an awful idea in this context.

I hate them.  Everybody hates them.  They are only useful when
one is trying to keep random anonymous idiots from spamming your
blog... a blog which otherwise allows comments from random anonymous
idiots.

But we were discussing validation of phone numbers allegedly belonging
*not* to anonymous people/entities, but rather to people/entities
that are in fact *known* to RIPE (and which already have, or which
can pretty easily create a RIPE login account).

Bottom line:  I don't see CAPTCHAs as being at all useful in a
phone validation system.

That having been said it might still be either necessary or
advisable to put a CAPTCHA in front of the RIPE account creation
process, e.g. if there isn't one there already, just to stop
some mindless automaton from trying to create 100,000 new RIPE
accounts on some given day.


Regards,
rfg