How does showing a domain's status fields "increase the 'criminal activity' regarding a domain name"?
Simply that domain thieves have learned to concentrate on trying fake-transfers only with a domain that says status "ok". Almost the only use of our fax in recent years have been dodgy transfer attempts on domains which are not locked, so showing it in my experience is inviting fraud/criminal-activity etc I've also been one of those taking calls from people attempting "social engineering" to gain access to or control over a domain, and those domains are invariablly shown as "ok" due to the status flags
How does showing a domain's create and expiration dates "increase abuse/malicious activity"?
Expiry date gets used by the masses of scum who send fake notices of renewal, fake directory listings. Creation date is used by mass spammers for SEO offers, web-design offers and so on - the amount of those on domains less than a year old is significantly higher than on established domains Similarly we've had numerous registrants scammed (and just as many complaining) because they register a domain, and then get bombarded by fraudsters with offers of other domains etc - whilst I know a lot of that is scammers utilising the zone files and determining the changes, in a considerable number of cases the creation date is used/mentioned A relatively common one is for a registrant to get a call which starts like "Hi we're from (registrar) [outright lie] and the domain (domain-name) you registered on (creation date) is held with a question over payment, can you just confirm the method you used ...."
As someone who's studied the criminal use of domains for many years,
We see almost no "criminal use" of domains - mostly we do see criminal attempts to get hold of domains (through theft or payment fraud), and abuse of services that a domain is being used to point at
In fact, domain status and date information is important to people who investigate abuse or many want to make judgements about the trustworthiness of a domain.
Yes, something that is (in my experience) to the overall detriment of the Registrant and Registrar is "useful" to A-N-Other-party (whether that is valid/legal/whatever or not) - this is always going to be the issue with "data" Rob