ICANN's Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) on Tuesday discussed the many issues that needs to be resolved regarding the WHOIS database in the Internet. The top concern that was addressed was the misuse of the public WHOIS data.

WHOIS is the data entries of individuals, corporations or entities that buy domain names from domain registrars. Some of these data are available for public use while some others are mostly private depending on the choice of domain buyers and the services available to the registrars.

The GNSO reports that it will study the extent of misuse of the public WHOIS data for the purpose of online spamming or other offensive and undesirable activities. The WHOIS study will also look into how exactly are registrants identified in the WHOIS database and how it affects or limits their privacy.

Even as further studies are being planned, the GNSO acknowledges that these efforts will only yield empirical data and conclusions in terms of subsequent action can be limited. For instance, the GNSO knows there are ambiguous domain owners in the WHOIS database and it is difficult to really know the owners of domain names registered using proxy services. These can potentially limit the studies and even skew the results. However, these studies can also potentially provide significant data that will help GNSO formulate further studies towards improving the WHOIS database to lessen the unpleasant activities that root from the lack of complete transparency of the domain name owners.

The 36th ICANN meeting in Seoul has wrapped up its second day as sub organizations under ICANN met to dissect issues that need improvement towards the fulfillment of ICANN's mandate to keep the Internet secure, stable and globally interoprable.