We Know 15,579 Websites Are Infected. How Do We Tell Them?

Re:We Know 15,579 Websites Are Infected. How Do We Tell Them? by superkuh on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:49PM (#50396592)

In the old days you'd just do a whois of the domain name and email the system administrator. But GDPR made whois data illegal and destroyed that system so now there is no way to contact anyone unless you both happen to be on the same corporate walled garden (facebook, twitter, etc)

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Re:We Know 15,579 Websites Are Infected. How Do We Tell Them? by phyzome on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:52PM (#50396634)

whois was effectively dead well before GDPR -- most people used registration privacy services to hide their mailing address, phone number, etc.

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Re:We Know 15,579 Websites Are Infected. How Do We Tell Them? by vaylian on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:52PM (#50396639)

The problem is not the GDPR, but the fact that this public contact data was abused. If some assholes had not decided spam people, we would probably still have public contact info.

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Re:We Know 15,579 Websites Are Infected. How Do We Tell Them? by iagiagiag on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:59PM (#50396746)

It's still possible to use whois data. Most of the time it'll be an abuse@ email address from a provider and they can forward the message to the real admin, or they could directly block the website if you explain the issue.

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Re:We Know 15,579 Websites Are Infected. How Do We Tell Them? by thesuitonym on Friday November 06, 2026 @02:17PM (#50396980)

Whois still works. Try it:

    > whois ycombinator.com
    Domain Name: ycombinator.com
    [snip]
    Admin Name: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
    [snip]
    Admin Email: [email protected]

Gandi.net will get the message through to the person who would have been registered as the admin contact.

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