ICANN gaffe reveals personal details of applicants

istockphoto

(CBS/AP) The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization in charge of introducing new Internet addresses to rival ".com" says it briefly suspended access to some documents on its website after a privacy gaffe.

Here comes the greatest Internet landgrab in history
ICANN to announce new top-level domains June 13

ICANN says it had mistakenly published postal addresses of individuals making bids for the names - contact information that was meant to be private. The disclosure was limited to cities and countries in some cases, while full street addresses appeared in others.

The discovery came late Thursday, a day after ICANN revealed nearly 2,000 proposals for new Internet suffixes and posted details on its website.

ICANN restored access to those documents after removing the contact information. It's not clear how long that took. ICANN did not immediately respond to requests for more information.

To date, ICANN reports that 1,930 applicants have filed to obtain a generic top-level domain