ICANN to study privacy issue
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From Times Wire Services
A panel on Internet names voted to conduct further studies on the databases containing names, phone numbers and other private information on domain-name owners, deferring questions over whether such details should remain public.
The committee of the Marina del Rey-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, also rejected a proposal to give Internet users the ability to list third-party contacts rather than their own data in the open, searchable databases called Whois.
Law enforcement officials, trademark lawyers and journalists, as well as spammers, use the database to figure out who may be behind a website. Privacy advocates say individuals shouldn’t have to reveal personal information to have a website.
