074 Fears of GDPR-Triggered Spam So Far Unfounded

Chances are you’re familiar with GDPR, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. It went into full effect back in May of this year, with the goal of improving the privacy and security of European citizens in particular, but the global community overall as well. One of the impacts of GDPR was that it made the WHOIS database private. WHOIS is the searchable online directory of domain name registrations, and some security researchers had concerns that spammers might take advantage of this anonymity to increase their registration rate of domain names, making it easier for them to send out their spam. Allan Liska is a senior security architect at Recorded Future and analyzed several months’ worth of data on spam rates to see if the expected uptick came to pass. Allan wasn’t alone on this project — he had assistance from his son, Bruce, who interned at Recorded Future this past summer and co-authored the report. We’ll hear from Bruce as well.