Folks, I would like to draw your attention to a fact that might be intended as a feature but what I consider more or less as a fault: I can't find any good reason that it is possible to protect objects which are previously unprotected or protected with an own mnt object also with other strong ("password") mnt objects without knowing the password of this maintainer. So it is possible for almost everyone to enter a bunch of bogus objects in the RIPE database without protection and then - as a 2nd step - to update all these objects, now including our company's mnt objects - thus we will become "responsible" for these bogus objects in a way, but we won't get aware of it. This may not be so significant for person objects, but is definitely much more serious regarding AS or route objects - so a redesign of this protection mechanism should be discussed at least. Please see http://www.ripe.net/cgi-bin/whois?sg4456-ripe as an example. Best regards, Carsten Schiefner -- Carsten Schiefner mailto:carsten.schiefner@tcpip-gmbh.de TCP/IP GmbH, Berlin (Germany) http://www.tcpip-gmbh.de Phone: +49.30.443366-0 Fax: +49.30.443366-15 Mobile: +49.172.5425797 TCP/IP GmbH runs the Contrib.Net backbone http://www.contrib.net ======================================================================