[leap_ahead]

It's not about the numbers. It's about people. Right now not a single individual can be trusted not to misuse somebody's personal details, through malice or negligence, and not create a severe risk for the owner. Being one in a narrow selection of computer professionals doesn't help much. One can be a genius and a person of low ethical standards at the same time. No solution until the civilization progresses much further than what we have now. Until then, lock down the Whois database. Even better, discontinue it altogether. Let individual registrars hold the personal details of their customers. At least it will remove the risk of compromising everyone's privacy with one action by not putting all eggs in one basket.

[azernik]

To start with - I absolutely agree with you about what should be done now. I just thought it was worth explaining why the system came to be the way it is now.

And i don't mean to imply that the computer scientists of yesteryear were somehow more honest people. It's just a lot less likely for someone to cheat in a group of a few hundred, where everyone is at most one degree of social separation from everyone else, and everyone is in any case very similar in background. Harder to screw over someone you see at all the conferences than some random stranger online, and if you do there will be social, not just legal, consequences.