Dear Colleagues, This is an ugly topic which has come up frequently but for which little has been done. Thanks to Dev, I have become aware of a high-profile domain theft case in my region. Because the victim is in the United States I am bringing he concerns to the community and will be pushing for serious attention on the problem. The full story can be found here: https://medium.com/p/24eb09e026dd, but basically an attacker used various social engineering methods to steal a domain name and then used it as collateral to steal a Twitter account from the same person. Here the domain was the vector and not the target, but it does not matter. The domain should have never been hijacked. The registrant in the case did everything right: paid bills, didn't abuse the domain name, a model domainer. There is clearly something very wrong with the way registrant identities are verified (or not) and a lack of procedure on ICANN's end for dealing with these domain customer issues. Obviously, the Twitter issue is beyond our prevue but the domain theft here could happen to anyone of us. In Buenos Aires I presented two cases to At-Large: 1) A non-English-speaking community group in Asia/Pacific who has their domain hijacked and did not even know where to begin to get help and 2) The case of Frederick Harris who claims he brought his hijacking case to Compliance and was turned away: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20131021_icann_can_not_be_trusted_to_protect_d omain_registrants/ There are multiple problems here starting with the registrant's information not being protected, to using payment systems as identification, to registrant education, to poor customer service, to a lack of process at ICANN, etc. etc. I'm calling here for the beginning of a true look into the problem, it's extent, and possible solutions. Thanks, Garth ------------------------------------- Garth Bruen Chair of ICANN At-Large North America (naralo.org) http://www.linkedin.com/pub/4/149/724 "If history is deprived of the Truth, we are left with nothing but an idle, unprofitable tale" -Polybius