From: Dirk Hunter 
Sent: Sunday, 15 June 2003 2:59 PM
To: jo.lim@auda.org.au
Subject: auDA WHOIS Policy Review

Just a quick email in response to the WHOIS policy review listed 
on the auDA website.

I believe that email addresses should not be returned in a WHOIS query. 
In order to combat the rising spam problem, and as a privacy measure, 
email addresses should not be disclosed within WHOIS lookups.

However, I understand the need to be able to get in contact with domain 
Technical and Admin contacts. Perhaps there could be a form within the 
auDA website that can be used to contact registrants of .au domains, 
without disclosing their email. (e.g I fill in a form to contact the 
owner of a domain, and the content of the form gets emailed to that 
contact, without me ever seeing their email address. Any future contact 
is done privately, but the initial contact is done via a web based form 
that hides email addresses.)

I am listed as a contact for some overseas domain names, and the WHOIS 
'data mining' that occurs has created a huge email spam problem for me. 
I think that a system like the one suggested above could stop this 
problem from getting out of hand with the Australian WHOIS database.

Thanks,

Dirk Hunter