ICANN’s WDPRS Report and Plan to Clean Up Whois Records
ICANN's recently released report, ICANN's Whois Data Accuracy and Availability Program: Description of Prior Efforts and New Compliance Initiatives [72KB PDF], is a summary of the Whois Data Problem Report System's (WDPRS) reports spanning a one-year period that concluded at the end of Fenruary 2007. In case you're not familiar with the WDPRS, it's system that tracks complaints about inaccurate or incomplete whois entries.
Notable facts from the report include:
- There were 50,189 reports for which ICANN received follow-up responses during the year.
- From these 50,189, 34,029 were unique domain names; the remaining 16,160 are duplicates.
- There's a “Tipping Point” going on here: most of the reports were filed by a few people: 1% of the, reporters are responsible for 90% of the reports. One individual was responsible for almost 40% of the reports.
According to the report, .info domains had the highest number of WDPRS reports, with 6.77 unique reports per 10,000 registrations. This is not a surprise given that inaccurate whois information is often the sign of a spammer and since .info domains are often used by spammers as they are relatively cheaper.
In response to the problem, ICANN will hold accuracy audits later this year in an attempt to clean up whois records. Each accredited registrar can expect to have their domain sampled by ICANN, and those with inaccurate data will be reported to WDPRS under an alias. For those domains that it reports for bad whois data, ICANN will double-check the domain's accuracy 45 days after its initial report to WDPRS.
Maybe I should go double-check my personal domains…
