I'm the product development manager at directNIC so I know exactly how the invalid WHOIS system works that ICANN recently implemented. I'll try to explain it as best as I can.
On September 3, 2002, the vice president of ICANN sent a letter to Network Solutions/Verisign about domains that had invalid WHOIS information. The whole letter is located at
http://www.icann.org/correspondence/...th-03sep02.htm. Because of this letter ICANN decided that it would allow everybody to submit to them invalid WHOIS information via a web form at
http://www.internic.net/cgi/rpt_whois/rpt.cgi.
The form let's anybody submit to ICANN a domain that has invalid WHOIS information. ICANN after a few days then forwards the complaint on to the domain registrar. We then have 15 days to get the information corrected or we are required to delete the domain. This goes for all domain registrars. I don't like it, but it's a rule that I must follow.
Just because you get one of the emails that does not mean that your information is invalid. For example, just yesterday we received one from ICANN about a domain that has completely valid information. ICANN does not verify if the information is valid or not, that is for the registrar to determine if its correct or not.
What we have noticed recently is that if you spam from the domain, have a really good domain, piss somebody off, or have questionable content on you site, people submit these domains to ICANN as having invalid WHOIS information. They hope that the domain will be deleted or whatever.
At directNIC we were an opensrs reseller, we still are, but we are no longer registering domains with them. Since April 2001, we have been an ICANN accredited domain registrar.
This invalid WHOIS thing is not a hoax. Registrars are deleting domains on a daily basis! So I would definitely recommend to everybody no matter who you use to register domains to make sure your contact information is correct and up to date.
If anybody has any questions about this, let me know.
Donny
directNIC