ICANN Notifies Top Web Spam Registrars

[engine]

ICANN has sent enforcement notices and notices of concern to certain registrars, including those reported this week as being the registrars for the majority of websites advertised in spam emails.

Earlier this week, an investigation by KnujOn, widely reported online, publicly identified 10 registrars as being the companies used to register the majority of domain names that have since appeared in spam email messages.

More than half of those registrars named had already been contacted by ICANN prior to publication of KnujOn’s report, and the remainder have since been notified following an analysis of other sources of data, including ICANN’s internal database.

ICANN Notifies Top Web Spam Registrars [icann.org]

[ebound]

While they're doing some spring cleaning they should go ahead and get rid of the tasters and kiters to.

[Webwork]

I've been tracking this but did not post about it because it's hard to see this as more than flaccid ICANN PR.

ICANN hasn't assessed a fine. ICANN hasn't imposed a penalty. All ICANN has done is send a message to certain registrars saying "You're supposed to do this and not do that and there can be consequences if you don't follow the rules".

Well, guess what ICANN?

Everyone already knew that and they did it anyway.

Someone needed to be taken to the woodshed.

[edited by: Webwork at 12:32 pm (utc) on May 30, 2008]

[weeks]

Let's watch and see what happens. This is the first step. ICANN cannot simply act without notice. Now notice has been given. I remain hopeful justice and fairness will be served. If not here today for these jerks, someplace very warm for a long, long time later.

[encyclo]

For completeness, here is the list of the "offending" registrars:

[knujon.com...]

Several familiar names in there, who are almost certainly not spammers themselves.

[Laker]

No surprise that China takes the Gold, Silver and Bronze in the Registrar Spamming Olympics.

Ditto Webwork's sentiments. ICANT. ICOULD but IWONT.

[2lame2rank]

No surprise that China takes the Gold, Silver and Bronze in the Registrar Spamming Olympics.

But six of the ten are US-based, eNom and Moniker being respectively first and second for spam site volume. Email spam is not a Chinese phenomenon, rather the majority of spam is sent by and aimed at US residents. Of course, no-one is seriously claiming that eNom and Moniker are spammers, just that they need to tighten up their policies on false whois information.

[koan]

Many registrars turn conveniently a blind eye to complaints they receive about spam out of sheer greed. Often spammers will have to pay a lot more just to get a "bullet proof" address and its good business for unethical registrars.

I remember back in the day Joker was one of the worst offenders. And I ended up moving all my domains to Godaddy because they had a stern policy against spammers, so I wanted to reward them with my business.

I think they're doing pretty well these days. Maybe being a good netizen does pay off in the end.

[weeks]

Many registrars turn conveniently a blind eye to complaints they receive about spam out of sheer greed.

What's the difference between "sheer greed" and plain ol' greed?

I didn't know that about Godaddy. That's good to hear because I'm setting up some new domains with them on their servers and I may go with them.

[jmccormac]

I wonder if this means that they won't do anything on Domain Tasting and are just trying to distract people from the obvious. Perhaps I'm too cynical about ICANN and they really are nice people with the best interests of the net at heart. Then again it is a bit warm here today.

Regards...jmcc

[rogerd]

The downside of a registrar with really tight policies about spam, copyright, and trademark issues is that they sometimes shoot first and ask questions later. I.e., they could turn off your domain in response to an unfounded complaint by a competitor, disgruntled customer, etc. I've heard of people moving away from GoDaddy for exactly that reason. It's a balancing act for registrars - they need to respond to legitimate problems, but have to be very careful when they take action to ensure such action is justified by the facts.