Removal of selected sets of contact information from the RIPE Database
Dear all, (apologies for duplicates) As you know, the subject of storage of person and role objects in the RIPE Database has been the focus of attention for some time, particularly information being stored in the Database that is not directly related to RIPE NCC activities and/or some of the people whose information is stored in the RIPE Database are not aware of the fact. During the RIPE 39 meeting in Bologna, I reported on increasing concerns about data privacy issues and potential legal implications the RIPE NCC could be involved in due to some of this data. Call it a coincidence,but we have been approached by the Dutch Data Protection Agency a few weeks ago to discuss this matter. The agency's action is taken on behalf of other similar global agencies who have requested their Dutch counterparts to act as the RIPE NCC is based in the Netherlands. As a result of the discussions, the authorities have requested the RIPE NCC to remove all unreferenced data currently stored in the Database. This affects mainly person objects related to domain name registration information stored in the RIPE Database. In order to minimise annoyances to users and the membership we would like to proceed with the process in a timely manner. In order to prevent undue deletions we propose the following process: 1. The following unreferenced person objects will be deleted: - objects referenced only from *.de domains, according to the list provided by DENIC (or list of mntners that define that set); - objects that are un-maintained. 2. Those who want to protect their objects in the database should tag them with a special mntner (RIPE-NCC-PN-NONE-MNT). This procedure is solely meant for personal use by individuals interested in keeping their personal data in the RIPE Database. However, this is subject to change in the future. 3. All of the object deletions will be performed in one step. There will be an outage in updates for ~1 day. We plan to start the process Friday, 21 September 2001 in the evening and finish by the end of Saturday. More concrete details will be provided in the coming weeks. Best regards, Joao Damas RIPE NCC
On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Joao Luis Silva Damas wrote: Can a list of "to be deleted" objects per country be posted or if not, how about after the fact, as to which objects have been deleted per country? Thanks, Hank
Dear all,
(apologies for duplicates)
As you know, the subject of storage of person and role objects in the RIPE Database has been the focus of attention for some time, particularly information being stored in the Database that is not directly related to RIPE NCC activities and/or some of the people whose information is stored in the RIPE Database are not aware of the fact.
During the RIPE 39 meeting in Bologna, I reported on increasing concerns about data privacy issues and potential legalimplications the RIPE NCC could be involved in due to some of this data.
Call it a coincidence,but we have been approached by the Dutch Data Protection Agency a few weeks ago to discuss this matter. The agency's action is taken on behalf of other similar global agencies who have requested their Dutch counterparts to act as the RIPE NCC is based in the Netherlands.
As a result of the discussions, the authorities have requested the RIPE NCC to remove all unreferenced data currently stored in the Database.
This affects mainly person objects related to domain name registration information stored in the RIPE Database.
In order to minimise annoyances to users and the membership we would like to proceed with the process in a timely manner.In order to prevent undue deletions we propose the following process:
1. The following unreferenced person objects will be deleted: - objects referenced only from *.de domains, according to the list provided by DENIC (or list of mntners that define that set); - objects that are un-maintained.
2. Those who want to protect their objects in the database should tag them with a special mntner (RIPE-NCC-PN-NONE-MNT). This procedure is solely meant for personal use by individuals interested inkeeping their personal data in the RIPE Database. However, this is subject to change in the future.
3. All of the object deletions will be performed in one step. There will be an outage in updates for ~1 day. We plan to start the process Friday, 21 September 2001 in the evening and finish by the end of Saturday. More concrete details will be provided in the coming weeks.
Best regards, Joao Damas RIPE NCC
Hank Nussbacher
Dear Hank, I can think of a couple of reasons for requesting this but bear in mind: -We are talking about the deletion of around 2.8 million objects -The only potential link between a person and a country is the address field, which does not necessarily contain a country - Exposing such a list would make a spammers dream. We have tried to protect personal information in the RIPE Database by preventing buld download of personal information and controlling the rate of queries. If we now expose a list of all this information we will doing precisely what we want to avoid Could you put forward some arguments for having this data exposed so we can all weight pros and cons? Thanks, Joao Damas RIPE NCC On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Hank Nussbacher wrote:
On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Joao Luis Silva Damas wrote:
Can a list of "to be deleted" objects per country be posted or if not, how about after the fact, as to which objects have been deleted per country?
Thanks, Hank
On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Joao Luis Silva Damas wrote: Some objects you may find were added 10 years ago when there was no rule for a maintainer for person objects. These objects may still be valid and referenced. I wonder how many people here remember dfk@cwi.nl in changed tags from 1990? :-) You are right that you need to protect against spammers. And yes, you want to split the 2.8M deletions into something of value. How about taking the last few "changed" tags, eliminate those with ripe.net references, and then create individual files with the objects deleted sorted by the change tag info. Protect them by user/pswd and send it only to the person listed in the changed tag. -Hank
Dear Hank,
I can think of a couple of reasons for requesting this but bear in mind:
-We are talking about the deletion of around 2.8 million objects -The only potential link between a person and a country is the address field, which does not necessarily contain a country - Exposing such a list would make a spammers dream. We have tried to protect personal information in the RIPE Database by preventing buld download of personal information and controlling the rate of queries. If we now expose a list of all this information we will doing precisely what we want to avoid
Could you put forward some arguments for having this data exposed so we can all weight pros and cons?
Thanks, Joao Damas RIPE NCC
On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Hank Nussbacher wrote:
On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Joao Luis Silva Damas wrote:
Can a list of "to be deleted" objects per country be posted or if not, how about after the fact, as to which objects have been deleted per country?
Thanks, Hank
Hank Nussbacher
At 07:02 +0200 22/8/01, Hank Nussbacher wrote:
On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Joao Luis Silva Damas wrote:
Some objects you may find were added 10 years ago when there was no rule for a maintainer for person objects. These objects may still be valid and referenced. I wonder how many people here remember dfk@cwi.nl in changed tags from 1990? :-)
Referenced objects will not be deleted. However, we use the term "reference" as reference by nic handle or name in admin-c and tech-c Changed lines are not real references to person objects because they just have an email address, not a reference to a person object. Changed lines are for the user's internal tracking and dates are used by some hostmaster procedures but they don't require data consistency within the database. In general, no database user should use the changed lines as a source of contact information. Hope this cleared any confusion. Joao Damas RIPE NCC
You are right that you need to protect against spammers. And yes, you want to split the 2.8M deletions into something of value. How about taking the last few "changed" tags, eliminate those with ripe.net references, and then create individual files with the objects deleted sorted by the change tag info. Protect them by user/pswd and send it only to the person listed in the changed tag.
-Hank
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participants (2)
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Hank Nussbacher -
Joao Luis Silva Damas