Researcher Craig Williams reported that he discovered a problem in the Google Apps domain registration system. As it turns out, full contact information of the vast majority of the registrants, including their names, physical addresses and phone numbers were exposed in the WHOIS database. This situation is typical for corporate registrants, however, it is very uncommon for private owners, since the personal data can easily be used by criminals, for example, to organize phishing attacks.
Williams managed to find out that the problem was caused by a technical failure: when domain registration was renewed, privacy protection turned off. Craig Williams reported the unpleasant discovery to Google, in a matter of days the problem was solved. According to reports, before the problem was fixed personal data of 94% of Google Apps users was publicly available.
