Whois Finder™ is a fast and free
whois lookup and domain search service.

A number of people recently received an unsolicited email from Lymree Database Technologies containing an e-Commerce Newsletter. As in any situation of unsolicited email, there is a question as to where the sender got the email details for the recipients. A number of people have raised this question following this spam as they were concerned that they received the email at an address they have only used for their domain name details.

When this issue arose on Monday, the DNC requested the NZRS manager investigate whether the party involved in the spam had misused the .nz register to obtain the email details. The SRS has provisions for tracking whois transactions and also has various alerts and rate-limiting functions in the event of any unreasonable level of access. This alert has already been activated and has led to one IP Address being blocked from access to the SRS whois because the level of access from that address was considered excessive.

The investigation undertaken for the DNC in this case showed that the party involved had not accessed the SRS whois to obtain the information. Neither had there been any other party putting an unreasonable level of transactions through the SRS whois.

It is possible that the details were obtained prior to the SRS being implemented on 14 October 2002. The DNC has written to Lymree Database Technologies asking them where they obtained the contact details they used. That letter also reminds the company that there are rules about use of information from the .nz register and that they may be subject to sanctions if it can be shown that they have obtained, and used, information from the .nz register for purposes that are not acceptable.