[members-discuss] Placing Members-Discuss in Moderation

Hi Sam,

On Thu, May 07, 2020 at 10:33:04AM +0100, Sam Gaw wrote:
> Sadly, moderation appears to have simply moved the problem with an election
> candidate taking to mining RipeDB and spamming contacts directly.

I am extremely concerned to be reading this. Use of contacts from
the RIPE DB for purposes outside the terms and conditions (e.g.
marketing) is already a big problem, and now there are allegations
of a candidate for membership of the board doing this.

The terms of use for the RIPE DB clearly state that contacts from it
are for operational use only.

Most of the time RIPE NCC can do very little about behaviour of
third parties, but this allegation is about someone who seeks a
leadership position within the RIPE community. If there are not
consequences for this then it's time to just give up and say it's
okay to market to RIPE DB contacts.

> Can anyone advise what the procedure for reporting DB abuse is?

In off-list conversation with RIPE NCC I am told that it is the
Executive Board who are taking responsibility for conduct on
members-discuss and they are seeking feedback on how members-discuss
is to be managed in future. You can contact them at
exec-board at ripe.net.

We haven't apparently yet had the pleasure of direct mails from any
election candidates, but if we had then I would be reporting it to
the Exec Board as misuse of the DB and also the relevant data
protection body in my jurisdiction (often they don't consider
business-to-business matters though). As I haven't personally
received any of this I'm not going to make any official complaint
but I would encourage anyone who has to do so because this is a
fundamental issue of RIPE DB policy on my opinion.

I would also be seeking a reassurance from the candidate that they
have deleted their copy of any personal data they have collected and
stored.

Thanks,
Andy