Interestingly enough, I am now one of those people who uses these forms to determine owners of domains. See, as a Trademark attorney, I need to know to whom I can send a letter for someone who owns a domain which infringes on my client's marks. Without the whois verification process (which is only supposed to happen if the domain is registered with an incomplete whois record), there is no one to whom I can send the letter.

I might add, the warning letter is not just for the trademark owner's benefit; it is better that we might negotiate with a cybersquatter or what-have-you prior to instituting an UDRP action which will cost both sides $$$.

A useful solution to this problem, I believe, are the proxy companies, which can provide an agent for process-type situation for the domain registrant. Of course, that simply adds one more step of difficulty for me, but hey, that's what they pay me for.

Or use a hotmail address, and a P.O. Box. Don't know what to tell you about the phone number.

Decius wrote:
] ] "Bogus "Whois Problem Reports" are increasingly going
] ] from being an annoyance to being a real security risk.
] ] Some recent incidents I've experienced due to Whois
] ] Problem Reports *merely* being filed:
] ]
] ] * Dotster, about two weeks ago, threatened to delete a
] ] domain if I didn't respond.
] ]
] ] * BulkRegister, just yesterday, threatened to suspend a
] ] domain if I didn't respond within 5 calendar days.
]
] Anyone can go to ICANN's webform and submit a complaint about
] any website. There is no human intervention because ICANN felt
] that there were few abuses of the system back when no body
] knew about it. You registrar will automatically generate an
] email and send it to you. If you don't respond within a very
] short period of time you loose the domain. The time to switch
] to registrars who protect anonymnity is now.

RE: ICANN destroys internet anonymnity