On Wednesday 7 November 2007, all DNS BE services will be unavailable (WHOIS, DAS, registration services, website, etc.) from 5.00 AM till 8.00 AM during our maintenance window (between 05:00 AM and 08:00 AM). We are planning a hardware upgrade which will take approximately 30 minutes.

Mercredi 7 novembre 2007 aucun service de DNS BE ne sera accessible (ni le WHOIS, ni le DAS, ni le service d’enregistrement, ni le site, etc.) entre 5h00 et 8h00 du matin. DNS BE s’occupera de l’entretien du hardware. Ceci ne prendra qu’une demi-heure environ.

Vinton Cerf quitte la présidence de l’Icann, l’organisme en charge de la gestion du système des noms de domaine. A sa tête depuis sept ans, il ne renouvellera pas son mandat à l’issue de la réunion internationale de l’Icann cette semaine, à Los Angeles. ‘ Il s’agit d’un test très important pour l’organisme, qu’il doit franchir, et qu’il franchira, pour prouver qu’il peut résister à un changement de direction ‘, a-t-il expliqué à l’agence AP. ‘ Je n’ai aucune hésitation à laisser les clés entre les mains d’une nouvelle équipe ‘.

Sous sa présidence, l’Icann a dû affronter de nombreuses critiques sur son mode de gestion ou encore sur l’interventionnisme des Etats-Unis sur ses décisions.

Vinton Cerf entend consacrer plus de temps à ses activités de Chief Internet Evangelist ‘ chez Google, président honoraire du consortium IPv6, et conseiller à la Nasa. Il compte également s’attaquer à la rédaction de plusieurs livres.

Source ZDNet

“ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC ) has issued an advisory on a process known as Domain Name Front Running. It is a practice of stealing someone’s domain name search queries and registering the domain name before the original person can register it. Let’s say you find a domain that is available for registration. If someone steals your idea and registers it before you, it is like holding you hostage and is called Domain Spying or Front Running. The SSAC was not able to find any hard evidence during their first inquiry so they are issuing the advisory for people to come forward with good hard evidence it is happening.

Much of the information presented before SSAC regarding domain name front running is anecdotal and incomplete. The information SSAC has reviewed allows us to observe that some part of the community believes monitoring practices that result in preemptive registration of domain names have occurred and that such practices are not acceptable. SSAC is concerned that, whether real or perceived, preemptive registration portrays an unfavorable image of the domain name industry. This Advisory is therefore a preliminary study and is intended to put the issue before the community for discussion and to solicit well-documented incidents, if any can be obtained.

There are several ways that spying could occur:

* Client software.
* 3rd Party WHOIS query portals.
* Unauthorized executables.
* DNS operators.
* Registrars (and resellers).
* Name Spinners.
* Registries
* Information leaks, social engineering.

Basically the SSAC is looking for hard evidence that this spying exists. If you can help with hard evidence, please contact them. I would encourage people to perform their whois query via our services as I can guarantee we are clean. We have also published ways that stealing can happen even if using our service. It is possible for spyware on your computer to steal your queries or even DNS queries at your own ISP. It is possible that a Registrar or Reseller is stealing your query. It is also possible that a Registry is leaking the information to Domain Tasters. Never type a domain name into a browser and see if a website exists. This is a horrible way to test if the domain exists because you are leaking the DNS query to global root servers and your ISP’s DNS servers. Major ISPs sell click stream data and non-existent domain name results.

As another side note. Our Bulk Check utility is not real-time. We run the results against a zonefile that could be up to 12 to 24 hours delayed. If you need a real-time query, please run it manually on our services. Domain Tasters are testing millions of domains a day that have been previously registered and that takes a lot of good names off the floor everyday. The only good news is that Domain Tasters generally throw back 99.9% of the domains within 5 days.

There will be a public forum next week at the LA ICANN meeting and I would encourage people to show up and speak out against Domain Tasting. I think Domain Tasting is causing a lot of damage to people, but it is hard to measure. People assume that names are being spied on while I find that the most common thing is Tasters that re-filter old domains over and over again.”

Source DomainTools

“L’association internet belge Isoc Belgium met en garde contre un nouveau mailing provenant d’escrocs allemands. Ce courriel est envoyé aux propriétaires de noms de domaine .be invités à se faire enregistrer dans le ‘Registre Internet Belge’. S’ensuit alors une facture de quasiment 1.000 EUR.

Deutscher Adressdienst (DAD GmbH) lance une nouvelle campagne de mailing, indique l’Internet Society Belgium (Isoc). La petite entreprise allemande expédie en effet aux propriétaires de noms de domaine .be un courriel trompeur les invitant à s’enregistrer dans le ‘Registre Internet Belge’. S’ils le font, ils se voient ensuite présenter une facture d’un montant de 958 euros.

Isoc a déjà dénoncé le problème auprès des Affaires économiques et de la Justice (parquet). Le gestionnaire des noms de domaine DNS.be a également été informé et a déposé une plainte auprès du ministère public d’Hambourg. DNS.be espère que les autorités allemandes obligeront l’entreprise à cesser ses activités.

En Belgique, Unizo a également introduit une plainte contre DAD. Unizo a constaté que DAD entend avec le ‘Registre Internet Belge’ combler le vide laissé par les escrocs du ‘Guide des entreprises Internet’. Le 14 août, le ‘Guide des entreprises Internet’ avait été condamné par le tribunal du commerce de Gand à une amende de 10.000 euros chaque fois qu’il enverrait de nouveaux formulaires d’enregistrement trompeurs. Selon Unizo, le ‘Registre Internet Belge’ enfreint la loi sur les pratiques commerciales, de la même manière que le ‘Guide des entreprises Internet’.

En Europe, il existe de nombreuses initiatives qui tentent de soutirer de l’argent à des entreprises peu attentives. Tel est notamment le cas de Fair Guide, de Professional Directory ou de European City Guide.”

Source DataNews.be

“Des membres de l’ICANN sont soupçonnés de délit d’initié. Ils auraient profité d’informations internes pour revendre des noms de domaines populaires au prix fort.

L’ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) a débuté une investigation interne sur des accusations de délit d’initié de certains de ses membres qui auraient profité d’informations pour collecter des données et acheter des noms de domaines libres qui recevaient beaucoup de requêtes DNS non abouties. De nombreux “registrar” (sociétés qui vendent des noms de domaines) et des cabinets spécialisés dans la propriété intellectuelle ont reçus des plaintes, et mis en évidence que de telles pratiques s’opéraient au sein de l’organisme de régulation des noms de domaines.

L’ICANN gère toutes les extensions de noms de domaines existants sur Internet (TLD et ccTLD) et attribue par contrats la gestion des “Root Servers” (serveur racine) DNS à des sociétés privées, des universités ou des organisations gouvernementales. Ces “Root Servers” DNS sont en quelque sorte la colonne vertébrale d’Internet pour tous ce qui se rapporte aux noms de domaine.

Il existe des centaines de milliers de serveurs DNS dans le monde entier. Chaque serveur DNS n’a en réalité à sa disposition qu’un ensemble d’informations limitées. Lorsque le serveur de DNS de votre fournisseur d’accès Internet doit trouver le nom de domaine www.zataz.com (que vous avez saisi dans votre navigateur Internet préféré), il demande à aux serveurs racines quels serveurs DNS peuvent lui répondre pour le TLD (zone) “.com”. Parmi ceux-ci, le serveur de DNS de votre fournisseur d’accès va en choisir un pour savoir quel est le serveur de DNS qui sera capable de répondre pour le domaine (zone) zataz.com. C’est ce dernier serveur de DNS qui donnera, au serveur de DNS de votre fournisseur d’accès, l’adresse IP de www.zataz.com, et vous permettra ainsi d’accéder à votre magazine en ligne préféré.

Les membres de l’ICANN soupçonnés de délit d’initié auraient simplement acheté la liste des requêtes DNS n’ayant pas aboutis pour des TLD (zones) .com, .net, .org, etc. Bien sûr seulement les domaines correspondant aux requêtes non-abouties les plus populaires étaient achetés pour être ensuite revendus au prix fort, car ces domaines étaient susceptibles de rapporter beaucoup de visiteurs, donc beaucoup d’argent.

Nous vous rapportions, mi Novembre (lire), que la lancement de l’IDN (International Domain name) par l’ICANN allait sûrement permettre aux “domainers” de se lancer dans des campagnes d’achats en masse, n’hésitant pas à violer les propriétés intellectuelles de nombreuses marques, simplement pour engendrer des revenus intéressants. Ces “domainers” sont la plupart du temps “registrar” et quelques fois aussi membres de l’ICANN. Ce mélange des genres entre un organisme, qui logiquement doit réguler les noms de domaines, et les membres de cette organisation qui justement vivent de façon lucrative de cette activité, est de moins en moins discret.

Il est grand temps que ICANN joue de nouveau son rôle de régulateur et face le ménage dans ses rangs.”

Source Zataz.com

Not sure what deal Apple (AAPL) finally struck here, but the domain iphone.com now resolves to Apple’s home page. I wrote a piece last week about all the traffic going to iphone.com — a domain registered privately at Go Daddy and full of ads to an e-commerce site called LetsTalk, which seems to sell every phone but the iPhone. Well, someone at Apple realized it was squandering potentially customers who type iphone.com directly into the browser. The domain name now sits on Apple’s servers, which means Apple bought it outright. Wonder how much Apple paid for that one…

NeuStar today announced that it has been awarded the contract to operate and administer the .US Internet domain name registry. The official country-code top level domain (ccTLD) for the United States, .US is overseen by the United States Department of Commerce.

The original .US registry contract was awarded to NeuStar in June 2001, and is due to expire on October 25, 2007. The new contract term is for a base of three years beginning October 26, 2007, with the possibility of two one-year extensions.

NeuStar won the competitive .US procurement after the Department of Commerce conducted a careful, thorough, and objective evaluation of all proposals. Criteria for selection included bidders’ experience, track record, and ability to deliver operational performance, technological excellence, policy compliance, product innovation, and marketing. NeuStar was judged to be the best overall registry operator under these criteria.

NeuStar is very pleased to retain operational and administrative responsibility for the .US domain, and we are honored that the Department of Commerce has placed its trust in us once again, said Richard Tindal, vice president of domain name services at NeuStar. This award is a validation of NeuStar’s exemplary performance and stewardship, and demonstrates the value that we provide to the government and to the industry. We are proud to remain in this important role.

Source CircleID

“NEW YORK - The Associated Press reports that the Internet’s key oversight agency, ICANN, is investigating suspicions that insider information is being used to snatch desired domain names before an individual or business can register them.

The Security and Stability Advisory Committee of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers termed the practice domain name front running and likened it to a stock broker buying or selling shares ahead of a client’s trade, in anticipation of a movement in price.

In the case of Internet addresses, many people who see a domain name available the first time they check find it already taken by the time they return to buy it.

That has led to suspicions that someone with access to search requests has been using the information to gauge interest in a domain name.

By buying the domain first, that person can then try to sell it to the interested party for a profit. This is different from traditional domain name speculation because the buyer knows for sure that the address is of interest.

Although the practice has never been proven, the ICANN committee said the perception that it is happening portrays an unfavorable image of the parties associated with the domain name registration process in specific, and of the domain name community in general.

The committee said it wants to prevent perception from evolving to accepted wisdom.

The committee cited several ways front running may be happening, including the installation of viruses and other software programmed to collect such information and the use of unscrupulous third-party sites to check domain name availability. Coincidence also was cited as a possibility.

ICANN is trying to gather evidence on whether it is occurring and, if so, whether policies or other measures are required to restrict the practice.”

Source DomainNews

The Sun has boosted its mobile phone offering to readers today, becoming the first national newspaper to launch a “.mobi” domain name with content tailored to mobile users.

The new site - THESUN.mobi - contains a simplified version of the Sun’s webpage, allowing readers to access it over mobile phones or portable devices.

Many Sun readers are not office-bound and so less able to access Sun Online, the paper’s website, from desktop computers.

The website allows readers to access the top 10 stories in news, sport, showbiz and Sun woman, as well as Mystic Meg horoscopes and Page 3 girls.

They can also download Page 3 girls and videos, ringtones and virals. Downloading videos and wallpaper costs between 25p and £3. Page 3 wallpapers cost £1 and Page 3 videos between £2 and £3.

Text alert services include news, sports, showbiz, football, Mystic Meg, lottery results and racing tips, with each alert priced at 25p. A text from dating service The Love Match costs 50p and racing tips cost £1 per text.

“There are more than eight million consumers of mobile news and information services in the UK in any given month, and the Sun is keen to get a head start in extending its brand into the mobile space and reaching new audiences,” said Andrew Bagguley, head of mobile strategy at the Sun’s owner, News Group Newspapers.

“Thesun.mobi gives readers access to the paper wherever they happen to be - on a bus, at the beach, at a football game - the Sun is always there, in their pockets, on their mobile,” said David Ryder, the chief marketing officer of dotMobi, the company that controls the rights to the .mobi domain name.

Source dotMobiz