Thank you, Brian. I for one never realized how much the ARS actually cost. Seems to me we could already afford half an SSAD from what ICANN has saved since the introduction of GDPR ;-)

Reading the report again, I note the immense positive impact on whois accuracy the 2013 RRA had:

"Regarding findings of the reports, the ARS found in its Cycle 6 Report (June 2018), for example, that approximately 94 percent of email addresses, 60 percent of telephone numbers, and 99
percent of postal addresses were found to be operable (e.g., accurate such that the email address or phone numbers are operational) for all three contacts (administrative, technical, and
registrant), according to the requirements of the 2013 RAA."

Susan and Alan will remember that we looked at that data with the Whois review team as well and also noted the positive trend towards stronger accuracy clearly visible by comparing successive Cycle results. While the lack of data makes this difficult to prove, it stands to reason that this trend has continued for the past four years, especially given the fact that the data is now hidden by default and therefore a large part of the reason why people would provide inaccurate data has fallen by the wayside (who in their right mind would _want_ their phone number to be publicly available?). We should also note that part of the reason why many phone numbers were considered inaccurate was because they simply used the wrong format as the domains were registered at a time when no format requirement was in place and people just used their local way of writing phone numbers.

+49.555123456 would be correct, but: 0049(0)555123456, 0049-555123456 and similar way of writing that very same number would not be even though these are also commonly used methods to write a phone number.

--
Volker A. Greimann
General Counsel and Policy Manager
KEY-SYSTEMS GMBH

T: +49 6894 9396901
M: +49 6894 9396851
F: +49 6894 9396851
W: www.key-systems.net

Key-Systems GmbH is a company registered at the local court of Saarbruecken, Germany with the registration no. HR B 18835
CEO: Oliver Fries and Robert Birkner

Part of the CentralNic Group PLC (LON: CNIC) a company registered in England and Wales with company number 8576358.

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On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 11:20 PM Brian Gutterman <brian.gutterman@icann.org> wrote:

Dear Michael and members of the Data Accuracy Scoping Team,

Kindly find attached a memo from Org on the WHOIS Accuracy Reporting System (ARS) with up-to-date/supplemental information and thinking from the Org on ARS background, issues and potential future studies. This memo was produced by colleagues from the Org Global Domain and Strategy team led by @Karen Lentz and @Jared Erwin who are included here in cc.

We hope this memo is useful in our ongoing discussions around the ARS and other related issues and stand ready to answer follow-up questions and join future discussions on these topics as they arise moving forward.

Best,

Brian

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