On Thu, 08 Jan 2004 13:14:39 -0800 Patrick Rigney <patrick(a)evocative.com> wrote: At first it sounds like they're asking for protection money or something, but think about this for a second. Your contact information must be available so that people know how to get in touch with you in the event of problems (I think there may even be an RFC on this). However, this same availability makes you a target for solicitation of great new offers. So in addition to all the anti-harvesting-crawler stuff (the OCR resistent gifs with one time access codes, etc), Registrars are offering a 'proxy' service where your information is not listed...rather the domain is managed by an abstracted management service that hides your real info and gives you an anonymous identity for things related to the domain. (I don't know if this is the way Netsol is doing it, but that's the way at least 2 others are doing it). As such, I can understand them charging for this since it is actually a service and not just "we'll cover up your info if you pay us". Now having said that, network solutions stinks...even though all the registrars seem to be getting better overall with all the competition. -Mike