[db-wg] Abuse contacts in RIPE database and whois

In this afternoon's session of the Anti-spam WG we discussed
the issue of publishing abuse contacts and I agreed to present
this consensus view and request. As time is short this is not
yet published in the minutes of the meeting, but it will be!

Rodney Tillotson
Chair, RIPE anti-spam WG


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The Anti-spam WG asks the Database WG to take some timely
action to improve the availability of abuse contacts for IP
addresses allocated through RIPE:

1. to publish an explicit abuse contact address where
possible for every address;
2. to lower the profile of other addresses currently in
the database and published through whois, which were never
intended for the abuse function.

While it is for the Database WG to decide the best way to
implement such improvements, the Anti-spam WG noted that
of the various technical changes which have been proposed
or partly implemented, one combination which we would find
acceptable is:
A. modify the IRT object to include an explicit 'abuse-mail'
attribute and to remove the mandatory requirement for PGP
or similar authentication
(or introduce a similar new object with those properties);
and
B. modify the default behaviour of the whois interfaces to
find and present an abuse address if there is one and to
suppress other e-mail addresses.

22nd September 2004.

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