[44net] Re: Level of Trust Expiration?

Here in the Netherlands, the official authority still manages the callsigns, although we do not have a "license" anymore, only a "registration". The amateur bands have been put in the license-free category with the exception that you need to register a callsign to use those bands, and with the note that to register a callsign you first need to pass an exam. Sounds similar in result, but judicially it is completely different. The exams have already been outsourced, it could happen with the registrations as well. Also, under the European privacy rulings, access to registered callsign information is very limited. There is no way at all to obtain holder information for a callsign, the only thing you can verify is if a given callsign is currently "in use", or has been used in the past and is thus not available for allocation. This is done via a webpage that has a low limit on usage. There is no way anymore to download a list of all issued callsigns and their status. I used that to compare the list of callsigns with the IP address registrations I managed, and remove addresses for callsigns that are no longer valid. Cannot do that anymore. Before, someone ran a weekly job to try all possible callsigns on that webpage and compiled a list, but this was detected and now it cannot be done anymore due to the rate limiting. Anyway, it is quite easy to fake the status of one's license holdings. I think that it is even more difficult for a random outsider (someone handling tickets) than it was for me personally, as of course when I got a request that seemed a bit fishy I had lots of ways to see what was going on. E.g. I have seen two cases where people claimed to have a license and requested a BGP-routed /24, but from some research it turned out they or their son was running a small webhosting company. I think that will be more difficult do find that kind of problems because local coordinators are not involved anymore. Rob On 2024-05-16 06:38, Peter Hannay via 44net wrote: