SGNIC is pleased to announce that with immediate effect for a trial period of 3 months, SGNIC WHOIS service will remove the display of email address, telephone number, fax number and mobile/pager number of all 4 contact types (Registrant/Owner, Administrative Contact, Technical Contact and Billing Contact) associated with a domain name. This move is in-line with national and global efforts to curb SPAM.
WHOIS was originally designed to allow an Internet user to query details of a domain name for ways to contact the person in the event of technical problems. However, being a public database, WHOIS is today also a convenient source of reference for spammers.
Email addresses and telephone numbers are the most common information being exploited by spammers. To prevent such information from being data-mined, it wil be removed from SGNIC's WHOIS display. The snail mail address will still be displayed to assist WHOIS users to identify the contacts of a domain name.
Any party who has legitimate reason to obtain email address or phone number of the domain name contact(s) can either:
(1) Obtain the information from the domain name's website (usually by prepending 'www.' in front of the domain name or perform an Internet search using the organization name or;
(2) Request the information from SGNIC via email ([email protected]), stating the reasons.
The trial period of 3 months will enable SGNIC to solicit feedback to fine-tune the WHOIS policy. For more information or feedback, please email [email protected]