Millions Of Domain Names Registered With Fakes Names

About one in 20 domain names—some 2.3 million Web sites—have been registered with patently false data in required contact information fields, Congressional auditors reported Wednesday.

The Government Accountability Office says those seeking to register the names of their Web sites may provide inaccurate contact information to registrars in order to hide their identities or to prevent members of the public from contacting them. Contact information is made publicly available on the Internet through a service known as Whois.

"Data accuracy in the Whois service can help law enforcement officials to investigate intellectual property misuse and online fraud, or identify the source of spam E-mail, and can help Internet operators to resolve technical network issues," Linda Koontz, GAO director of information management issues, writes in the 51-page report sent to the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property.

Koontz says much of the information appears "obviously and intentionally false without verification against any reference data."

GAO also found that 1.64 million domain names, or 3.7%, have been registered with incomplete data in one or more of the required fields. In total, GAO estimates that 3.89 million domain names, or 8.7%, had at least one instance of patently false or incomplete data in the required Whois contact information fields.Of the 45 error reports that GAO submitted to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, for further investigation—for each domain name with patently false contact data that GAO found in a random sample of 900—11 domain name holders provided updated contact information that was not patently false within 30 days after GAO submitted the error reports to ICANN. One domain name, which had been pending deletion before submission to ICANN, was terminated after GAO submitted the error report. The remaining 33 were not corrected.

GAO says the Department of Commerce and ICANN have taken steps to ensure the accuracy of contact data in the Whois database. In addition to implementing a Registrar Accreditation Agreement that requires registrars to investigate and correct any reported inaccuracies in the contact information, they have amended their memorandum of understanding to require ICANN to continue assessing the operation of the Whois service and to implement measures to secure improved accuracy of data.