Colleagues I know none of you want to talk about any redevelopment of the RIPE Database. Not even doing it bit by bit. I keep reminding you that it is a 30 year old design and barely fit for purpose in the modern world. But still you all want to keep this dinosaur even though it is now on life support. However, the environment in which the RIPE Database lives and operates IS constantly changing. It is only the database that stands still. This latest move by Google and Yahoo to combat spam is another nail in the coffin of the RIPE Database. It simply cannot continue to operate in the way it has for the last 30 years. The environment in which the database operates is outside of our control. Technology and regulations evolve. They are not going to be adapted to accommodate the RIPE Database just because we don't want to change anything. At any moment a big tech company or regulatory authority can just announce that a change is coming that may cripple the RIPE Database. Then we are thrown into panic mode, trying to adapt and modify an ancient product to keep it alive in a modern environment. Could you imagine Apple trying to keep a 30 year old version of OSX working in today's environment? This new anti-spam measure is a convenient point to reflect on how one part of the RIPE Database is used. Notifications are just one part of an audit system. Many other parts are missing. To be sending out 30k emails a day to hundreds of thousands of email addresses stored in a public database as part of an incomplete audit system has to stop. Notification emails on this scale are a relic of the past. Just thinking out aloud, perhaps what we need is to extend the LIR portal to an account system for anyone who maintains data in the RIPE Database. Through that account a complete audit trail will be accessible to designated people with an SSO credential. That audit trail should contain fully indexed details of what data has been created, updated and deleted, when, who did it, from where, by what means, using what authorisation, what the outcome was, for example. The audit trail will contain details of all updates no matter which interface was used. Currently if you update using the web interface the details of the update are lost to the user when you close your browser. You may be notified, but the who, when, how is lost. All of those details will be saved in a full audit trail. When you log into your account there will be messages to tell you data has changed so authorised people can check the changes. ALL attributes related to any form of notification can then be removed from the RIPE Database. NO emails will be sent out relating to notifications or acknowledgements. That will avoid all this spam sent out by the RIPE NCC and other spam received on the emails harvested by abusers from the database and take a lot of pressure off the RIPE NCC who have to maintain this archaic email service to such a high service level. The RIPE NCC currently archives all data related to updates. That is updates received, ack and notif messages sent out. As long as these audit trails are non-editable by users that can replace the current archive system maintained by the RIPE NCC. Extending the LIR portal to accounts for any data holder can be used later for a number of other improvements. What we need now from the community is agreement to ask the RIPE NCC database engineers to have an ideas storming session to come up with an outline design for such an audit trail system to replace all the notifications. The time really has come to start replacing some bits of the old RIPE Database system. I hope, finally, some of you will agree with me... cheers denis co-chair DB-WG ======================================================== DISCLAIMER Everything I said above is my personal, professional opinion. It is what I believe to be honest and true to the best of my knowledge. No one in this industry pays me anything. I have nothing to gain or lose by any decision. I push for what I believe is for the good of the Internet, in some small way. Nothing I say is ever intended to be offensive or a personal attack. Even if I strongly disagree with you or question your motives. Politicians question each other's motives all the time. RIPE discussion is often as much about politics and self interest as it is technical. I have a style of writing that some may not be familiar with, others sometimes use it against me. I also have OCD. It makes me see the world slightly differently to others. It drives my mind's obsessive need for detail. I can not change the way I express my detailed opinions. People may choose how to interpret them. ======================================================== On Thu, 14 Mar 2024 at 17:04, Edward Shryane via db-wg <db-wg@ripe.net> wrote:

Dear colleagues,

As part of the Whois 1.111 release planned for 28th March, we will make changes to comply with new requirements for bulk email senders from two of the large email providers, namely Google [1][2] and Yahoo [3][4]. The RIPE NCC are reviewing these requirements across all our services. Please refer to the RIPE Labs article published today [5].

We send a lot of mail from Whois, on average 30,000 messages a day (comprised mostly of update acknowledgements and notifications) which qualifies us as a bulk sender. We want to comply with these requirements as we depend on email for notifications but also to listen to our users wishes. There are nearly 900,000 email addresses in the RIPE Database. 65,000 are hosted by Google and 5,000 by Yahoo, so these addresses are directly affected by these requirements.

In this release, we will implement mail bounce detection (i.e. an outgoing message has permanently failed delivery) and also unsubscription (i.e. one-click unsubscribe from a mail client). Once an address is undeliverable or unsubscribed, we will not send further Whois update acknowledgements or notifications to that address. However we will continue to send targeted notifications where required by RIPE policy (e.g. abuse-c validation, RIPE-NONAUTH route object cleanup etc.).

Notification attributes in the RIPE Database (i.e. irt-nfy, mnt-nfy, notify, ref-nfy, upd-to) will be affected, as we will no longer send update notifications to an unsubscribed or undeliverable address. In update acknowledgements we will warn if any address is undeliverable or unsubscribed. Once unsubscribed, if you want to re-subscribe, for now you will need to contact RIPE NCC support [6].

The changes can already be tested in our Release Candidate environment [7].

We welcome feedback from the community.

Regards Ed Shryane RIPE NCC

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References

1. Google announcement: https://blog.google/products/gmail/gmail-security-authentication-spam-protec... 2. Google email sender guidelines: https://support.google.com/a/answer/81126?hl=en 3. Yahoo announcement: https://blog.postmaster.yahooinc.com/post/730172167494483968/more-secure-les... 4. Yahoo sender best practices: https://senders.yahooinc.com/best-practices/ 5. Enhancing Email Delivery at the RIPE NCC: https://labs.ripe.net/author/fergalc/enhancing-email-delivery-at-the-ripe-nc... 6. Contacting the RIPE NCC https://www.ripe.net/support/contact/ 7. Release candidate environment https://apps.db.ripe.net/docs/Release-Notes/#release-candidate-environment

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