No Such Weblog

Trying to be a good network citizen, I tend to make sure that I report ongoing fraud attempts and phishing expeditions that make it into my inbox. Today, two messages posing as eBay, and trying to get eBay login information and credit card information; the server used runs on a DSL line in Latin America. The fake was obvious since I’m a member of eBay Germany (and they talk German to me, not English) — still, it’s a bad thing, others may fall for it, and (unlike myself) eBay has the incentives, means, and resources to make sure the proper investigations are launched, and measures are taken to shut this down.On to ebay.de we go. After about 5-10 pointless pages, a web form. The e-mail message and relevant log file entries are cut and pasted, the “submit” button is clicked — and then I’m just told that my message can’t be accepted.The only other means of contact: A 0900-* phone number at 59 Euro Cents per minute — and then, all you get is a pointer to <spoof (at) ebay.de>, by e-mail, after you have expensively spelt your e-mail address to the customer services representative.Why isn’t <spoof (at) ebay.de> featured prominently on their web site? Why are they bothering people with web forms when they have to forward the messages in question by e-mail anyway? Why do I have to spend several minutes on the phone before I get the necessary e-mail address? Why do I have to pay for that, at rates an order of magnitude more expensive than international calls?

Resolutions Adopted at Special ICANN Board Meeting: ccNSO bylaw changes; Independent Review Panel; .pro’s agreement is not terminated; redelegations of .ps and .ng.

Take an Apple Macintosh bought in Europe. Insert a European-bought DVD for the first time. The DVD drive is encoded for region 1. The DVD is region 2. You can change the drive’s region code 4 more times. Enter your password to change the drive’s region code.Why, precisely, is this kind of hassle necessary, again? And why, precisely, is it that this particular industry can’t leave its consumers alone with the products they have bought, but always finds another way to harass them?

I’m no longer convinced that letting the mobile phone industry loose on the Internet (or the DNS) can be considered harmless: I’m seriously surprised how any industry can come up with Internet user interfaces as crappy as what is let loose on mobile phone users here.I’ve been a happy user of Siemens mobile phones for several years now, and I’ve been using them to go online for quite some time: Connected to a laptop or a PDA through IRDA or a data cable, and connected to the Net through a data call to an analog modem or, more recently, GPRS. All that was configured rather easily, on PDAs and laptops.Until tonight, I never actually tried to use the built-in Internet stuff, and I guess I won’t try it again. To begin with, configuring WAP on a “blank” mobile phone (a C60 without infrared) isn’t precisely fun — too many parameters distributed over too many menus, with too long strings to enter over these keyboards. And the error diagnostics are vague to the extent of being useless.Once you have configured WAP, the real fun begins: Keying in URLs on a mobile phone’s keyboard. The slash was particularly interesting, 12-14 quick presses on the ‘0’ key, with visual feedback lagging considerably behind key presses, with a timeout that interferes as soon as key presses are slow enough for visual feedback to be current, and with a mobile phone that occasionally misses a key press.Needless to say, the server on which the desired ring tone resides was unreachable for the mobile (with unclear error diagnostics, and a connection through “real” Internet access working fine). Ultimately, a similar ringtone MIDI file was transmitted through infrared to a different mobile phone, and sent to the C60 by short message.

At its call last night, the GNSO Council has extended the time lines for the WHOIS Task Forces, since only few constituency statements have been received so far. The hard deadline for constituency statements is no 16 April. Preliminary reports are expected by 6 May. The rest of the process is shifted accordingly.

ICANN has asked the GNSO Council to consider “guidance … concerning the criteria for designating a successor operator for .net”. A subcommittee of the GNSO Council will deal with this; this committee is expected to meet first in the week beginning 12 April.

The Domain Registry of America regularly reminds me of expiration dates of my domain names — even if the current registrar will automatically renew the names in question –, and of the kinds of practices that ICANN’s current WHOIS policies enable.Latest letter here.

From Free2Innovate.net (asking to be nominated for Best Supporting Actor?): ICANN has issued an updated Inter-Registrar Transfers Policy “intended to provide a procedure for the smooth transition of a domain name from one registrar to another when such a change is requested by the domain name holder.” It only took ICANN one year and four months to launch the new policy after it was endorsed in a “final report” first issued Nov. 30, 2002. That’s faster than normal for ICANN.UPDATE: Thomas Roesler blames NetSol for the delay.This is doubly wrong: What ICANN posted yesterday could be the final transfers policy — but isn’t because NSI wrote that letter. That’s the delay I’m blaming them for.Concerning all the other delays, it’s worth remembering how this mess begun, and what NSI said back then.

ICANN has posted another update on transfers. Part of that update is a letter from NSI’s Champion Mitchell (aka Best Actor Rome 2004). In that letter, NSI suggests that a default-ack mechanism (as agreed on in the new policy) will lead to fraud and slamming. NSI essentially suggests adopting a default-nack policy with standardized forms instead. At the very least, it seems, NSI would prefer another delay until all dispute resolution and appeals processes are in place, and until everything is implemented on the registry side.Of course, this discussion has been going on since at least summer 2001. It’s fascinating (I’m avoiding the word “frustrating”) that NSI is now attempting to reopen this policy issue, and it is even more fascinating that they have succeeded in causing another delay in the implementation process of a consensus policy adopted by GNSO Council (in February 2003) and Board (in April 2003), and brought into implementation shape by a hard-working assistance group since July 2003.

The not entirely planned outage is over. If you notice any quirks, please let me know.