[DBWG] WHOIS filtering and the "-B" option

[Frank Habicht]

Hi Alan, all,

I was under these assumptions:
- by not showing email addresses by default, it was made a little more
  difficult for spammers to harvest them. very little.
  I thought that was the main reason when removing the emails from the
  default results.
- I thought/hoped that queries with -B were rate limited....?

more below...

On 11/18/2016 10:46 AM, Alan Barrett wrote:
> The AFRINIC WHOIS server “filters” results by default.  It seems to delete all fields that contain email addresses.
> 
> For example, here are two queries with and without “-B”:
> 
> $ whois -h whois.afrinic.net IT7-AFRINIC | egrep -v '^%|^$'
> person:         Infrastructure Team
> address:        AFRINIC Ltd
> address:        11th Floor, Standard Chartered Tower
> address:        19, Cybercity
> address:        Ebène
> address:        Mauritius
> phone:          +230 403 51 00
> nic-hdl:        IT7-AFRINIC
> source:         AFRINIC # Filtered
> 
> $ whois -h whois.afrinic.net -- '-B IT7-AFRINIC' | egrep -v '^%|^$
> person:         Infrastructure Team
> address:        AFRINIC Ltd
> address:        11th Floor, Standard Chartered Tower
> address:        19, Cybercity
> address:        Ebène
> address:        Mauritius
> phone:          +230 403 51 00
> e-mail:         sysadmin at afrinic.net
> nic-hdl:        IT7-AFRINIC
> changed:        hiba at afrinic.net 20130416
> changed:        radha.ramphul at afrinic.net 20160808
> source:         AFRINIC
> 
> I have two questions about this:
> 
> 1. Instead of deleting the lines that are “filtered”, would it make
> sense to replace them with some sort of explanation that the information
> has been filtered? For example, like this:

I think it's the question of lesser importance, and lean slightly
towards adding the "# Filtered"

> 2. Is it useful to censor the email addresses by default? 
> It seems to me that this adds no security (because the query 
> can simply be repeated with the “-B” option), and reduces the
> usefulness.

is there any rate-limiting on "-B" queries ?

If only 3 potential spammers can't find email addresses in AfriNIC DB,
because they didn't add "-B" - isn't that already a positive result and
"worth it" (that we have to type "-B")?

Sorry to respond with questions...

Regards,
Frank