Comments on: My DNS happiness is complete

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 04:38:38 +0000

Yes, I did read that. Elsewhere it said that it would be turned over to authorized requesters under French law.

It may not be perfect, but it’s a lot better than nothing.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:06:15 +0000

Thank you for sharing this with everyone John!

Indeed, it is a privacy service, and gives domain name owners at Gandi.net more privacy in the ownership of their domains.

What it does NOT do: put the ownership of your domains at risk! At all times, it is very clearly the domain owner that is in control of the domain. There is no “proxy” service, or other company that is involved: at Gandi, *you* own the domain, period. With 100% domain name ownership does come some legal obligations, one of which is that you must be able to be contacted at any time by a third party. This is imposed on all ICANN accredited registrars.

If you would like to discuss this point directly with Gandi, I warmly invite you to visit the Gandi Bar at http://www.gandibar.net :)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:04:45 +0000

I look at it the other way around: it seems like a pity that the domain name infrastructure does not support fully anonymous domain names.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:03:20 +0000

Did you read the terms of service for the new privacy service? They say, among other things, “We will disclose the complete contact information that has been registered for the Gandi handle that is attached to a domain name: … to any third party that requests it”. That seems to make the privacy service completely useless.

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:08:37 +0000

That’s weird. I don’t think I’ve ever had them obfuscate my whois data. Except my email address, which I chose for them to do. They publish email addresses that rotate every so often, and expire every so often, but people that email the current address will be be forwarded to your real address. So you can still reliably use whois to email people.

By: Joey Hess

Joey Hess — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:56:20 +0000

Erm, that is, I remember them refusing, but they must have changed their minds, since my whois is de-obfuscated at the moment.

Anyway, it’s a pity that whois can no longer generally be used for the purpose for which it was intended — reliably getting out of band contact information for domain admins.

By: Joey Hess

Joey Hess — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:53:03 +0000

I actually asked Gandi a while ago if they could people stop obfuscating/filtering my contact details in my whois entry. Because I *want* people to be able to email, call, or write me about DNS issues.

They refused.

Privacy is nice, except when it is forced upon you.

By: Stemp

Stemp — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:31:57 +0000

Thanks for the info I didn’t know about it. Nice feature from Gandi.
And you’re right they are nice folks.

By: Eric Bostrom

Eric Bostrom — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:55:38 +0000

Now the government can’t keep track of the highly secretive Kansas Suburblog mystery author!