Hi Marco,
If some LIRs need some kind of trust in order to avoid this I would suggest (as done before) that the abuse mail address is checked when creating a maintainer object. By checked I mean that Ripe NCC sends a mail to the mail address and wait for a reply before creating the maintainer object, this can actually be done with software so I don't think it will be a big burden on Ripe NCC. If this is not enough, if some LIRs fear that the LIRs in question would try to do an update and this way insert an invalid email address Im sure it wouldn't be a problem repeating the check procedure.
This is useless other then some verification that on the time of creation somebody replied to one mail sent to that specific address. Unless you design an audit procedure to check the validity and response of the address at random intervals it doesn't add anything to check it on creation time except for extra time as the system waits for your reply.
Why do you say that its useless? As I understand some LIRs fear that invalid email addresses might be entered, if so, the above procedure will not approve willnotwork@domain while a syntax check will. As I said, the email address can be checked again if its changed - this way we can make sure that only valid email addresses received by the LIR are entered. What more do you want? But this will of course not say anything about general response time or if all other mails to the address is simply ignored.. But isn't that a completely different story?
Let's keep it at running a syntax check...
Why? Whats the disadvantage of the above procedure? It might require some ressources from Ripe NCC but I would say thats reasonable considering you will this way be sure email addresses entered are all valid. At least I would prefer this compared to keeping the current system because some might argue that the system discussed is not trustworthy. Med venlig hilsen/Best regards Christian Rasmussen Hosting manager, jay.net a/s Smedeland 32, 2600 Glostrup, Denmark Email: noc@jay.net Personal email: chr@corp.jay.net Tlf./Phone: +45 3336 6300, Fax: +45 3336 6301 Produkter / Products: http://hosting.jay.net