Hi All

The abuse contact policy ripe-563 states " Internet number resources need to have an “abuse-c:” attribute."
https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-563
This means all resources subject to RIPE policies must have an "abuse-c:" reference. Although the RIPE NCC has confirmed some are still missing this, the majority now have an "abuse-c:" set up and the missing ones can be addressed.

Tools provided by the RIPE NCC to find the abuse contact for a resource (RIPEstat, Abuse Finder) only search for "abuse-c:" data. Historically the "abuse-mailbox:" attribute was allowed in five object types - PERSON, ROLE, MNTNER, ORGANISATION, IRT. These other references may now hold stale data and can only be found if anyone manually queries the database and follows many references out from a resource object.

A cleanup was proposed in the impact analysis for ripe-563
https://www.ripe.net/participate/policies/proposals/2011-06
" In order to clean up existing data, the RIPE NCC will notify the users and convert "abuse-mailbox:" attributes into "remarks:" in any object other than role objects."

As it is now a few years since this was discussed and agreed I think it wise to propose the cleanup again and reaffirm this is the way to go.

I therefore propose the RIPE NCC converts all "abuse-mailbox:" attributes into "remarks:" attributes in PERSON, MNTNER, ORGANISATION and IRT objects. Then deprecates this attribute from these object types.

I further propose that any "abuse-mailbox:" attribute in a ROLE object, where the ROLE object is not referenced by any "abuse-c:" attribute, and has not been referenced for at least 90 days, is also converted into "remarks:". This will help to clean up historical "abuse-mailbox:" attributes that existed in ROLE objects before "abuse-c:" was introduced.

The original cleanup proposal was part of the impact analysis for ripe-563 and so it has already been through the PDP process and agreed. So I don't think this needs to go through the PDP again and can be agreed by consensus in the DB WG, unless anyone thinks otherwise.

Comments appreciated.

cheers
Denis Walker
Independent Netizen