[Coco] bogus WhoIs complaint

[Christian Lesage]

On 2010-06-11 00:28, Roger Taylor wrote:
>
> Now I wonder how a person with a private phone number is supposed to 
> make it on the web. 

First, if you requested that your number not be listed by the phone 
company, there is no law that actually prevents you from divulging your 
own number. "Private" doesn't mean "top secret".

Second, if you operate a web site, you are broadcasting contents to the 
world, and you have a responsibility for that broadcasting. IMHO, it is 
just normal that you are requested to provide a way to contact you. You 
can't become a broadcaster and remain anonymous, since your site's 
contents could be offensive or prejudicial to other people, who have the 
right to know who you are.

If you don't want to divulge your "private" number, then just use 
another one, as long as it is valid. There are companies that offer 
telephone numbers for free. I'm thinking about freephoneline.ca, but I'm 
sure you have the same thing in the US.

> Isn't there some kind of legal issue here?  Is it possible to make my 
> WhoIs record private or some parts of it? 

I don't think so. After all, nobody's forced to operate a web site.

> This must be a telemarketer's dream, 

Indeed.

> to be able to probe any site on the web, and grab the phone number of 
> the admin and then sell it to all the other spammers.

I think spammers prefer email anyways. ;) My number is listed and I 
don't get that many telemarketing calls. Not even 0.1 % of the spam I 
receive by email.

Cheers,

Christian