"ICANN has received the document from Knujon, and Xin Net, along with other registrars that have a high percentage of unchanged Whois inaccuracy reports filed through the WDPRS, are being investigated by ICANN. Until the investigation is concluded and determinations are made, it would be inappropriate for ICANN to comment on the details of the matter."
However, Bruen says that ICANN responded to the latest Knujon document by referencing Section 3.7.8 of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA):
"Registrar shall, upon notification by any person of an inaccuracy in the contact information associated with a Registered Name sponsored by Registrar, take reasonable steps to investigate that claimed inaccuracy. In the event Registrar learns of inaccurate contact information associated with a Registered Name it sponsors, it shall take reasonable steps to correct that inaccuracy."
Bruen now interprets this as meaning bogus registrars "don't have to actually -correct- phony information, they just have to show that they looked into it." If this is true, it would potentially make it difficult for ICANN to sever its relationship with Xinnet under section 5.3 of the RAA:
"5.3.4 Registrar fails to cure any breach of this Agreement (other than a failure to comply with a policy adopted by ICANN during the term of this Agreement as to which Registrar is seeking, or still has time to seek, review under Subsection 4.3.2 of whether a consensus is present) within fifteen working days after ICANN gives Registrar notice of the breach."
In other words, as long as the regulatory requirements concerning inaccurate contact information is uncertain, and Xinnet continues to rake in domain registration fees from spammers, the bogus sites will probably continue to spawn under the Chinese registrar -- and contribute to email clutter -- for the foreseeable future.
(Disclosure: I am friends with Bruen)
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Comments
Thanks for highlighting Bruen's report. It's important that the community be aware of of this problem. ICANN has just posted a draft revised Registrar Accreditation Agreement. The wording of Section 3.7.8 hasn't changed. The public comment period is open until 4 August if you wish to comment. (Disclosure: I represent the Intellectual Property Constituency on the ICANN GNSO Council.)
Thank you for shining a bright light on this long-standing issue with this and other registrars, mostly located in China.
This hilights two significant windows into the spammer economy:
1) What were once considered "bullet proof" domain registrars, such as XIN NET / Paycentre.com, who will accept bogus contact information, stolen credit cards and hacked paypal accounts during the registration of millions of spammable domains, with the registrar usually located in China.
2) The sponsors who register these domains.
The example website properties used in both this report and Mr. Bruen's report all are part of a group known as SanCash, who have since December 2007 gone even further underground. More than two thirds of the spam everybody in the world receives is for a SanCash property, and it's likely you've all heard of them before: Elite Herbal, VPXL, PowerEnlarge, Canadian Healthcare, Diamond Replicas, Prestige Replicas and King Replicas. More recently they also added Prestige Footwear to this cadre of sites.
I wrote about this issue on my Blog:
http://ikillspammers.blogspot.com/2008/06/china-last-resort-for-spammer-...
in light of XIN NET's sudden change of heart. But they're still apparently allowing several thousands of new domains to continue to be registered using the exact same bogus contact information we all complained to them about for months.
Spammers and their sponsors will rapidly run out of "bullet proof" domain providers. Then we'll start seeing fast-flux ip addresses in place of domains, which will ultimately be far less reliable to them.
Great report.
SiL
Kudo's to Knujon for shing a light on these cockroaches. It seems ironic that one small private group has actually made some progress fighting these Internet criminals. In the meanwhile the law, large private corporations, well funded industry associations, and governments have proven clueless and powerless in this fight.
As the primary backer of HD DVD, Toshiba spent a lot of money developing technology that they didn't get a lot of use out of. Some features from HD DVD players, like upscaling, fit nicely into standard DVD players. Others, like web-enabled content, aren't quite as applicable. Sure you could put the same capabilities into a DVD player, but with no official standard you'd be hard pressed to get anyone to take advantage of it.
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For a while, the slap on the wrist helped.
SPAM from criminals registered thru the rogue serial registrars in CN now seems as high as ever.
Too bad that ICANN does not really care...
axkf76erp34fkBiERf7lq2pduy7d
axkf76erp34fkBiERf7lq2pduy7d
http://continentaltire.awardspace.com
axkf76erp34fkBiERf7lq2pduy7d
http://continentaltire.awardspace.com
PLEASE, PLEASE a one year follow up report on what ICANN has (NOT) done since then.
PREDICTION:
ICANN to drive spam to just less than 100% of email.
Fox guarding henhouse. ZERO regulation of registrars serial spam registration.
Rogue registrars now running approx 100% registered sites spamming.
How bad are the rogue registrars ?
You be the judge:
http://rss.uribl.com/nic/
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