Hi, On Mar 11, 2013, at 11:30 am, Arnold <wiegert@telus.net> wrote: […]
Since I have been reporting SPAM for some time, missing, out-of-date or inaccurate contact information has always been a problem.
It always will be. There were 43,809 maintainers in the database on 11 March according to ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/dbase/split/ripe.db.mntner.gz. It doesn't take a particularly large churn in the staff or organisational structures at network operators for an appreciable fraction of the social data to become unreliable each year.
A number of contact addresses are listed as some public general mail server such as gmail, hotmail etc. All of those are pretty much useless. Since RIPE registers the actual user, it should insist on a usable contact address at the registering organization.
I think you are equating the requirement to list an address with a commitment to actually handle abuse reports. While there's nothing wrong with improving contact information publication tools, it's the will to handle the reports that's really important. If people want to receive reports and use the information to improve their network operations they will make sure they are easy to contact. The reason people do not publish useful contact information is because they have no interest in handling the reports and not because of a deficiency in the tools provided by the RIPE NCC or any other RIR. Regards, Leo