"changed" field should be deleted

It is my belief that the only info that should be public is the latest 
info available,  not the historical changes.

To the one that called me lamer...As far as being called a lamer,  that 
attitude is not appreciated.    Its been my experience that many spammers
have built up hierarchies,  which are hosts that have sub-domains that are
all part of the same spamming organization.

For legal reasons,  anyone and everyone that is related to an IP Address or
related higher domains or IP routes are included in the anti-spam message,  
that way noone can say later,  they didn't know or weren't notified about the law.

I'm not going to attempt to try and determine to what extent host providers
are involved with a spamming operation.   In fact,  many hosts have acquired
"anti-spam" complaint/ticket type emails as a response program to complaints 
and are using this just as a "front" and have no intention of responding to 
eliminate spammers on their networks... Therefore,  it makes sense to let 
as many persons associated with lower level domains that are sourced as 
spammers in order that they (being in an admin position) can forward the 
complaints and use them to help identify and isolate spammers.

Further,  I am not going to assume that any IP information contained in a
"spam" is indeed a spam.  That is for the relative admins and techies to 
go through their own logs to determine the true origin of the spam.

I do agree that historical changes should be limited to ISP/IAP techs,
but the rest of the database must remain open for persons to use that 
information to locate and identify persons and organizations that are
along the IP routes.   It's like getting a harassing letter from a PO Box 
owned by a commercial enterprise and not being allowed to get the name
and physical address of the company that rents the box.  Here, in the US,
the public has a right to get almost all information about persons that 
are responsible in any private company,  for many different reasons.

Any ISP/IAP organization that receives a dis-proportionate amount of 
complaints against a sub-domain or host,  should take a look at why that 
particular host or secondary provider has such a high percentage of 
spammers on their net.  

Perhaps, they need to change their poicies on spam to keep their site from 
being a desirable place to spam from.

As far as the charge about the spam complaints being spam themselves,
that is a non-argument.    The email generated in response to spam is an
infintesimal amount compared to the spammers that generate 25,000 emails
per hour.

If you'd like to reply with intelligent subject matter,  and knock off the name
calling crap,  I'd welcome a sincere discussion of these subjects.

For an example,  you may wish to re-visit how rs.internic.net handles their
database information.  Very concise,  and generally only contains the most
recent information that is pertinent to the proper identification of current 
admin, billing, tech contacts, and IP Addressing/Server Information.

Change stuff as history is not included.   I'd love to see the extraneous material
removed from your ripe.net lookup databases... then perhaps only those 
persons that really need to know would be contacted.


> I agree that this needs attention.
> The whole changed: functionality should be reviewed.
> 
> I agree that a short term measure could be to suppress changed
> information unless explicitly requested. This would also allow
> us to check the whois query logs for those requesting it ...;-).
> Does anyone know if this would break any knows scripts or uses
> of the database?
> 
> Daniel
> 
>   > kissg at sztaki.hu writes:
>   > Dear folks,
>   > 
>   > Nowadays I can see a new style of anti-spam fight.
>   > 
>   > If the victim gets some junk mail,
>   > (s)he retrieves all database objects (including *rt) relative to
>   > ALL hosts, domains, and IP addresses that can be found in the mail
>   header, > and s(he) send complaining mails to ALL the fifty e-mail
>   addresses > found in the database objects (including the *ch field). :-(
>   > > So these uneducated lamers multiply the amount of spam and harras >
>   a dozen of peoples who are not responsible for the original junk mail >
>   and the spam relays. > The lamers cannot diffrentiate the "responsible
>   persons" and those > who maintain the database records itselves. > > >
>   My first radical suggestion is: >   Let's delete the *ch field from the
>   database objects. > > However I know that there should be some info
>   about the > history of records. > > a few raw ideas: > - modified
>   database software that hides the *ch field. *ch's could >   be retrieved
>   with some extra efforts only > - some coded ID instead of e-mail
>   address. Ordinary peoples couldn't >   decode it but authorized ripe-ops
>   could. (E.g. via WWW or e-mail) >   This info shouldn't be public. > >
>   What is your opinion? > > (Personally I've changed my jobs years ago but
>   my e-mail address > can be found in hundreds of *ch fields. So I hate
>   the > anti-spam spam as well than the spam itself.) > > > Regards > >
>   Gabor > 
> 


    s/James Leonard
BRG Customer Service - Belltown Research Group, Seattle, WA USA
http://www.speakeasy.org/~belltown
SPAM=NET TRAFFIC OVERLOAD=TELECOM $URCHARGE$=GOVT. TAXE$