I'm not sure that you guys can do anything about this, but it's worth
looking into. I registered AS626XX a week ago, and since it's registration,
I've been getting calls from "wholesale" carriers trying to get me to
purchase IP transit from them. Someone is obviously using your database of
contact information to generate sales leads.
512-377-6827 was one of the numbers trying to get more information about my
network and how they could "help" me.
My guess is someone is using your mass whois database, looking at the most
recently issued/created AS numbers, and cold calling.
Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of maintaining the whois?
Yep!
We registered a few domains and get the same thing, I think it's
something that people are going to have to live with.
I agree. We just politely tell them we are not interested and move on
about our day. Some cold callers we have taken up on offers. It just
depends who calls and whether or not we are looking for new service.
WHOIS Privacy is nice for the domains and we use for some of our domains
but not all. We just hate when customers get those scam notices and call
us or open tickets about it.
I've had a guy calling me for 6 months about my phone number being selected to win a prize. This isn't on the company line, this is on the bat phone. I have told him numerous times I understand how he is contacting me and that I will not be sending him any money but that hasn't stopped the problem.
Best thing to do is list a Google voice number on your whois and make the voice mail a greeting about how to email you. It's horrible, but I just can't see how it will stop.
What about the 2am phone calls from the guy, who did a nslookup on a website, and then whois on the ip, who is calling to say his porn site is partially not working and he's pissed.
imho. The days of having public records like whois/rwhois available has passed. The data use to be protected with a simple clue test. Only the clue minded folks knew about the data, and were pretty responsible with it. Now anyone can look it up. We use to use that data to be able to directly communicate with another provider for a serious problem. It was great knowing exactly how to get a hold of someone, and not have to forage your way through tech support... noc.. etc..
Even the anti-spam army out there seem to ignore 'This is the abuse contact', and end up spamming all whois org contacts. What's the point in that?
Why can't we implement a method where you have to be a registered, and paying, user/member with an AS number to be able to get IP whois 'contact' info? Sure list my name and company. But keep my email and phone number private. In fact show me a web log of all registered users that looked me up.
I doubt that will ever happen. So it's time for me to update my arin contact as this past weekend I got exactly that 2am porn call and it was quite disturbing which website was being referenced. In all my years I knew there was some crazy stuff out there, but this took the cake.
Even the anti-spam army out there seem to ignore 'This is the abuse
contact', and end up spamming all whois org contacts. What's the point
in that?
I agree. Most of them end up blasting all contacts which is completely
stupid!!! That's why you see on the comment sections with many providers
something along the lines of "Please use Abuse Handle or please send
requests for DMCA to this handle"
Why can't we implement a method where you have to be a registered, and
paying, user/member with an AS number to be able to get IP whois
'contact' info? Sure list my name and company. But keep my email and
phone number private. In fact show me >a web log of all registered
users that looked me up.
This could be doable. But some minor details worked out or requirements.
I doubt that will ever happen.
Have a little faith. If many providers wanted the feature, I'm sure
ARIN would not have a problem implementing it.
Well, if the community actually did it's job so mail to abuse@ and postmaster@
and similar role addresses actually got delivered instead of bouncing, and
then actually did some good rather than being unread/ignored, maybe we wouldn't
have to rely on a DNS jockey listed in a SOA record being pissed off enough
at being cc'ed on an abuse mail to get a co-worker's butt in gear.
Err. ICANN isn't a membership organization. It is possible to change things at ICANN, but the mechanisms are ... different and much slower (since it involves getting consensus in a multi-stakeholder environment).
I doubt that will ever happen. So it's time for me to update my arin contact as this past weekend I got exactly that 2am porn call and it was quite disturbing which website was being referenced. In all my years I knew there was some crazy stuff out there, but this took the cake.
You can change anything you want. ARIN & ICANN are both member organizations. Propose a change, get the votes, and POOF!, things are changed.
Even better, only the "clued" (and paid) get to vote. So it is exactly what you wanted.
Oh Patrick, you know that's not true.. I've been paying ARIN for 13 years and for many of those ARIN wouldn't even let me modify my ASN. I don't get a vote, but I pay.
Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of maintaining the whois?
Yep!
We registered a few domains and get the same thing, I think it's
something that people are going to have to live with.
I agree. We just politely tell them we are not interested and move on
about our day. Some cold callers we have taken up on offers. It just
depends who calls and whether or not we are looking for new service.
WHOIS Privacy is nice for the domains and we use for some of our
domains but not all. We just hate when customers get those scam
notices and call us or open tickets about it.
The fact you take some cold callers "up on offers" means they will
continue to call.
Please do not reward people who scrape whois or the NANOG-l archive.
If it is not profitable to call people, they will stop.
Put another way: You are making life worse for all of us.
--
TTFN,
patrick
I'm not sure how they receive their data or if they mined from other
sources. But one can draw some conclusions that they get information
from some list/database and if you are a new provider or a new recipient
of number resources then yes; that's probably how ARIN WHOIS database.
But why don't we take off our hat for one moment that would call this
spam and simply look at it for what it is. I'm sure others would agree.
Sales teams typically would compile a list of names and phone numbers in
a local community and cold call to see if there is any interest. Waiting
on folks to call you could be weeks, months and years thus adversely
affecting your business. I'm sure every company has done some cold
calling before. If you have not then you must have a customer base of
that is making you the profit you desire and/or you are already a
billionaire. Thus you the resources for advertisements on
local/regional/national TV. (Not the only form of advertising BTW)
I can name several tier 1 and 2 providers who have reached out to us for
IP transit based on cold calling/ARIN WHOIS.
We've been an ARIN paying member since 2005 and have not had any contact
with any sales folks until last 4 to 5 years maybe.
IMHO, you guys should get off this spam kick and simply tell folks you
are not interested and move on about your day. Life is way too short.
I'm not sure how cold calling is spamming?
The folks that received the porn calls.... my response is SMH and I am
very disgusted. But I definitely can understand your feelings for cold
calling. Again, life is too short to get all worked up about it. Like I
said before simply tell them not interested and don't call again. We do
and we very seldom find a stubborn sales person that continue with
repeated calls. For the ones we do we have our phone system immediately
hang up their call based on number. If they someone how gain my or
others mobile numbers we simply add as contact and send to voicemail.
After a while they'll get the message. One I threaten him and he never
called again. I wouldn't recommend but it worked! LOL
Everyone's point is we shouldn't have to deal with or provide those
types of workarounds for unprofessional sales folks that don't
understand the word "NO". And I whole heartily agree.
What happen to the days when you could simply tell someone not
interested, don't call again and you wouldn't hear from them ever
again???
Or the days when everything wasn't treated as spam???
It's not just networking - recently I received a cold call from
a local company trying to sell me home improvements. I had the joy of
reminding them that I explained to them that I rent and thus will not
be even a remotely plausible customer, the *last* time they called me.
You'd think with better analytics, this sort of thing would happen less, not more.
Actually the member / non-member distinction is important in
California corporations law.
Also important is the distinction between agency of government and
anything else, there's about two reams of double-sided 11pt text on
the subject, and that's just between Michael Froomkin and Joe Simms.
When the former days disappeared, the latter days did also. In that exact
order.
If marketing wants to talk about "nurturing" leads, then I don't want to
be a lead. Period.
My attitude changed the day I got my SIXTH call from the same sales guy
who I'd told "I might have the budget and need next year to get $product,
and if so I'll definitely call you. The problem is that in this day and
age of autodialers and call centers, most of the incoming unsolicited
communications anyone gets are of a nature that they cost the person
initiating the conversation orders of magnitude less to send than it costs
you to answer. In the snail mail days, that balance was a lot closer to
even, and so you weren't getting constant bombardments of semi- or
un-targeted marketing solely because you had a publicly visible contact
path.
Sales has come lightyears in the last 20 years, advertising is a direct reflection of that. If you visit a travel website, suddenly every website you visit for the next 2 weeks is how to buy what you didn't the first time.
Case in point.. And I'm going to name drop, but do not consider this a shame. I have been looking at various filtering technologies, and was looking at Barracudas site. I went on with my day, but noticed that filtering vendors start showing up on random websites. Fast forward 24 hours later..
Any website I visit with any "major" advertising (Slashdot was where it was first VERY apparent) was socked with barracuda ads. We see talking at least 3 of 5 major ad spaces were now ONLY barracuda. It's called retargeting and they are using cookies to do it. The problem is, nearly everyone is doing this as the pay per click is substantially larger (something like 4x of regular).
People want to make money, and this is a fantastic source of it. It annoys people, but I'm not so sure I'd call it spam. I almost think it's suggestive but just transparent enough so you don't feel like big business knows as much as they do.
And I don't know how the rest of you have it, but if I get 10 bucks in the mail.. I'm spending it.
Case in point.. And I'm going to name drop, but do not consider this a shame.
I have been looking at various filtering technologies, and was looking at
Barracudas site. I went on with my day, but noticed that filtering vendors
start showing up on random websites. Fast forward 24 hours later..
You know what I am waiting for?
The LED billboards on the side of the road displaying targeted advertisements, based on your proximity to them, because your android phone is telling the sign where you are.
If many providers wanted the feature, I'm sure
