What's a, "Technical Contact"; Technically?

[rooster]

Oh wizened and worthy warriors;

I’ve just begun to try manual reporting. I want to go about it the right way so’s to be effective, *where possible*, and not just make matters worse by spewing gibberish at the wrong abuse desks.

I am not sure where the, “Technical Contact”, (as shown in ‘whois’ reports), stacks in the hierarchy of reporting abuse. In fact, it seems a bit odd that anyone ‘ogling’ porn sites would be of a mind to actually pursue technical issues; but, that’s just me.

Regarding porn sites; I have been getting a few porn 'spamvertizements' with links to domains underwritten by, veriSign-Melbourne IT. The, “Registrant”, is the same for all eleven of the most recent batch (although I ‘suss’ he’s actually a disinterested 3rd party), and the Tech Name/Tech Email is the same, too; to whit: YahooDomains TechContact, <domain.tech[at]YAHOO-INC.COM>.

I gather porn spamming is contrary to Section 10(g) of: “Yahoo! Web Hosting Terms of Service”, but I don’t understand the practical difference between the role of Melbourne IT as the domain’s Registrar of Record, and that of, “Yahoo Domains – Technical Contact”. To a newbie like me, it looks as though the domain is registered in two places.

Where I hope this leads is: if I submit the complete spam, and the interNIC Registration information, to <domain.tech[at]YAHOO-INC.COM>, might they sever their connection to the domain and thereby open the way for a wdprs report to interNIC? Or is there something more Yahoo routinely does that could result in having the domain nuked?

I've read Section 3 of Yahoo's Registration Agreement; I just don't understand what they actually *do* in these instances

Moderator edit: [at] replaced with [at] in email references due to spiders.

[Jeff G.]

These are commercial customers of Yahoo! - that is, they are paying Yahoo! for webhosting. They also probably paid Yahoo! a one-time fee (for the first so many years) so that Yahoo! could register the domains on their behalf through Yahoo!'s affiliate relationship with Melbourne IT. Therefore, they are paying customers of both Yahoo! and Melbourne IT, and should be larted as such.

OTOH, it is usually nicer to lookup a Technical Contact's domain at abuse.net, and use the abuse.net registered or recommended abuse addresses, rather than using the Technical Contact's actual email address.

The following is per pages 11-12 of RFC920 Domain Requirements:

   3)  The name, title, mailing address, phone number, and organization

   of the domain technical contact.  The online mailbox and NIC-Ident of

   the domain technical contact should also be included.  This is the

   contact point for problems with the domain and for updating

   information about the domain.  Also, the domain technical contact may

   be responsible for hosts in this domain.

      For example:

         Technical Contact

            Organization  USC/Information Sciences Institute

            Name          Craig Milo Rogers

            Title         Researcher

            Mail Address  USC/ISI

                          4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 1001

                          Marina del Rey, CA. 90292-6695

            Phone Number  213-822-1511

            Net Mailbox   Rogers[at]USC-ISIB.ARPA

            NIC-Ident     CMR

[rooster]

Thanks Geff (& dbiel);

That answers my Q nicely.

[fullnameoralias]

...

Regarding porn sites; I have been getting a few porn 'spamvertizements' with links to domains underwritten by, veriSign-Melbourne IT. The, “Registrant”, is the same for all eleven of the most recent batch (although I ‘suss’ he’s actually a disinterested 3rd party), and the Tech Name/Tech Email is the same, too; to whit: YahooDomains TechContact, <domain.tech[at]YAHOO-INC.COM>.

33583[/snapback]

Looks like I'm getting the same stuff. All emails are coming from different IP addresses, but spamvertized sites are always registerd on yahoo-inc.com and that Melbourne company. All Web sites are EXACTLY the same (I opened about 6 of them randomly - after removing part after the URL). I just sent my daily 6 or 7 reports to yahoo-inc.com with the following comment:

--------------------

Dear sir/madam,

I've been receiving this junk for over a month now. I'm getting several dozen spam emails daily; they're coming from different IP addresses, but domains of advertized Web sites are ALWAYS refistered by your company and "MELBOURNE IT, LTD. D/B/A INTERNET NAMES WORLDWIDE " (for example, check out the one I'm sending you right now) and hosted on your servers. The page on the Web site is always EXACTLY the same (including ID of a free counter on a page). The domains are registered to different persons, obviously fakes. The page contains pornographic content which is a violation of Yahoo policy. The page also has a code inside which redirects user to another page which offers the user to sell his Yahoo email address (?).

Is there any way for you to stop this individual(s) at least from registering new domains (they're registering dozens of domains every day)? To get names of domains they've been using, check SpamCop complains for the last several weeks.

Thank you in advance.

--------------------

Let's see what they say.

[Jeff G.]

Don't hold your breath. They're a tight-lipped bunch, and don't bother to specify what (if any) action they took, if they bother to reply at all. Of course, that situation has gone downhill since before Derek left, especially with regard to paying customers (which you appear to be complaining about - Yahoo! doesn't register domains for free).

[fullnameoralias]

Don't hold your breath.  They're a tight-lipped bunch, and don't bother to specify what (if any) action they took, if they bother to reply at all.  Of course, that situation has gone downhill since before Derek left, especially with regard to paying customers (which you appear to be complaining about - Yahoo! doesn't register domains for free).

34113[/snapback]

Yep, I've been reporting this stuff for over a month and nothing seems to be happening...

So if the provider/hoster/registration company responsible for spam does not react to my complaints, there's nothing I can do?

[turetzsr]

<snip>

So if the provider/hoster/registration company responsible for spam does not react to my complaints, there's nothing I can do?

34166[/snapback]

...Is either:

• spam illegal in the jurisdiction where your mail server resides?
  
• could spam be considered illegal indirectly in that it's fraudulent, similar to the treatment New York state Attorney General Spitzer is trying to treat it (BBC News: New York takes on 'spam' e-mail)?
  

If so, perhaps you could convince an e-mail admin to take it to the authorities. Short of that, I don't see much hope.