Personal privacy threatened by Network Solution service

Domain name registrar, Network Solutions (NSI), is planning a spin-off navigation tool which could make its customers' data publicly available over the Web.

An NSI spokeswoman told Silicon.com it was too early to say whether it would have to ask permission before including personal customer data in the service. The search directory will be developed over the next 12 months in partnership with Centraal's RealNames service.

Keith Teare, CEO of Centraal, told Silicon.com: "The aim is to cross-reference the physical location and phone number of a company with its Web address and email contacts. People will be able to type in the phone number or real name of a company and instantly access its Web site." He added that the details of the product were up to NSI.

Business information of this sort is already in the public domain - although not in a central repository. But privacy laws could be infringed if individuals registering .com, .edu or .net addresses are not informed how their data will be used.

NSI contracts state that the company has the right to disclose a certain account information in a publicly accessible directory. But it promises to exclude contact information and email addresses - unless it has express permission from the customer.

Paola Benassi, product operations officer at TrustE, which lobbies for self-regulated privacy in the US, said: "If NSI has promised not to re-use the data then this service must get permission off its customers, or else it will be running a fine line with the Federal Trade Commission, which investigates fraud deception."

It is not clear at this point whether the directory will be stored on a Web page, or whether it will be directly accessible from a Web browser. Teare said he expected all the leading browsers to start supporting RealNames over the next 12 months.

The initiative follows a joint marketing agreement between NSI and Centraal, announced last week, whereby NSI will sell Centraal's RealName service to its customers.