ICANN announces new WDPRS reporting form

[AlphaCentauri]

http://icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-19dec08-en.htm

Revamped Whois Inaccuracy Reporting System Goes Live
19 December 2008

A redesigned system for receiving reports of inaccurate domain name registration data has gone live today.

The Whois Data Problem Report System (WDPRS) has a number of advantages over the previous system, which was first introduced in 2002. Among them are:

* More detailed information is captured from complainants to assist registrars in investigating Whois inaccuracies
* Duplicate reports regarding the same domain name are not accepted by the system
* Reports concerning domains already on hold are removed
* Greater capacity has been introduced to allow for bulk submissions of reports
* Processes have been put in place to assess registrar compliance with RAA Whois inaccuracy investigation requirements

The revamped WDRPS can be found at http://wdprs.internic.net/ .

Besides the totally bogus "improvement" of making it impossible to even try to report a domain if the spammer has already reported himself for the one accurate item in the registration, can anyone see what the hell this link does to offer "greater capacity ... for bulk submissions?"

It appears the only improvement is to make it easier for ICANN to ignore reports, not easier for reporting.

[Veka]

My thoughts exactly AC. Multiple choice forms are made for idiots. Lets just hope that there is a bulk report form coming up soon.

[Forseti]

On the other hand, the improvements from the registrar's perspective are great. The previous reports were all over the map, and very frustrating - especially complaints for domains already acted upon. Recent actions regarding these reports tends to suggest also that they are working on improving credibility of the reports in the eyes of the registrars, and also to give them more teeth.

I don't know what that "duplicate report" bit is however ???

[AlphaCentauri]

I had heard that ICANN only accepts one report about false whois for a given domain and won't accept a second until the first is resolved. So a spammer can register a domain, include one bit of correct information, and report himself claiming that information is incorrect. During the six weeks/six months/six years it takes ICANN to act, no one can report any of the truly fake information and the domain is basically protected from reporting.

Just to test, I just now tried reporting the domain I reported December 19. There has been no action so far, after all. So I entered the domain name and went to screen #2. I answered all the questions about the accuracy of every detail of the registration, and tried to go to screen #3. Then I got this message:

Someone already submitted same report in the past 45 days.

So it's true. ICANN protects spammers from more than one person reporting, and now they don't even have to worry their little heads about a second report sneaking through. I'm surprised they even took my first report -- Knujon must have missed that one.

This is one of the same domains for which AIT refused to accept a false whois report in August, telling me to report it to WDPRS. Stacey Burnette got a copy of that exchange, too. I hadn't tried WDPRS at the time, as I'd been unable to get them to accept a report the first time I tried and gave up (no action unless I responded to an email; no email ever sent; no response to inquiries about where the email was).

[Forseti]

[Veka]

One thing I have found very frustrating is nameservers (usually registered by XIN NET) that are on "clienthold" and are not accepted on new system. Still they work perfectly fine as ns for a spammer.

Example: 88wow88.com

Used by numerous Russian online casino sites etc.