Hello All, Just a comment to provide some balance. I have often heard registrants state that they receive SPAM to their email address because it is published in the WHOIS. This may well be true, however it is worth noting that a person's email address is often available from many other Internet sources. For example the email addresses of Council members are publicly available at: http://www.gnso.icann.org/council/members.shtml Whenever you post to this list, your email address is publicly available. Whenever you post to any online Internet forum your email address can be harvested. Likewise many phone numbers displayed in the WHOIS are readily available online from the online telephone directories. So WHOIS is not the only source of email addresses used for SPAM. I suspect that most general untargeted SPAM (e.g offers for enlargements of parts of ones body, financial scams etc), does not originate from WHOIS. Where I can definitely say that WHOIS has been harvested is when the unsolicited marketing messages relate to the context of WHOIS and domain names. The most common example is domain name renewal notices sent to the postal address displayed in the WHOIS along with the expiry date. Or when a domain name is registered, and the registrant is phoned the next day noting that the domain name has been registered, and asking if the registrant would like to get web hosting services. Regards, Bruce Tonkin Registrars rep to GNSO Council