[db-wg] RIPE abuse finder

On 19.03.2013, at 9:08 , Peter Koch <pk at DENIC.DE> wrote:

> I agree with Gert. The tool's logic is flawed and actually detrimental
> to the data quality of the RIPE DB since it provides an incentive to
> create duplicate person entries.  A "maintainer" is responsible for
> the database object, not for the entity (or person) referenced by it.
> 
> -Peter

Gert, Peter,

I understand the pain such ill addressed messages cause, believe me. I have personally been getting them since the first appearance of spam. My address was in many remarks fields in our registry. It has not gotten better when all sorts of intrusion detection systems started sending automated mails to what they thought the best contact information was for an IP address. And mind you, my mail address is on RFC1918 too. ;-( 

I have always tried to find the cause for such messages ending up with me and to correct the registry such that they end up in the correct person's mailbox. Often this has not been easy, because it was impossible to determine the flawed logic in tools I did not even know existed, let alone that i could know for sure how they worked. This is why I feel strongly about both having good information in the registry and about the RIPE NCC maintaining authoritative tools to find it.

I know that these days it is not easy since some people intentionally obfuscate heir information in the registry. I observe that the more obfuscated the registration information is, the higher the demand for abuse contact information. The start of this thread by Max seems to be a case in point to me.

I am the first to agree that the current abuse-finder logic needs improvement. I also agree that abuse-c is the right way to go. I am concerned about the time between now and Q3/2014 when current plans call for abuse-c to be fully deployed. Deployment is going to be a lot of hard work on the part of both the maintainers and the RIPE NCC. My concern is that we as a community who operate the RIPE registry will look unresponsive to justified demands for abuse contact information if we do not make an effort to provide the best abuse contacts we can find in our registry now. Telling people that ask for this information that we will be ready in Q3 next year is not going to reflect well on our ability as a community to keep our house in order.

My point is that we should do three hings:

	- implement abuse-c (well under way)
	- do our very best to populate the registry with good abuse contact information
	- fix any flaws in the abuse-finder and the RIPEStat abuse-contat widget that is based on it

In the mean time it would be best if we tried to improve the registry information for any abuse mail that winds up in our mailboxes.

Daniel