You seem to be assuming that registrars are exempted from this imaginary problem of &quot;tampering&quot;.<p>Why should I trust the registrar&#x27;s data?  (Your data.)<p>Why should you trust the registry&#x27;s data?<p>Why should we trust ftp.internic.net?<p>But I guess we can&#x27;t be sure if ICANN&#x27;s servers have been compromised, right?<p>The truth is I am not too worried about the zone files I download.  Thousands of people download com.zone every day.  Millions download root.zone.<p>And I do not care to play the &quot;chain of trust&quot; game that DNSSEC requires.<p>Every DNS admin nowadays disables AXFR.<p>They have their reasons.<p>But to me the principle of downloading zones still makes perfect sense.<p>I would not use axfr when ssh and rsync are available, but the point is the same.<p>Why get IP addresses piecemeal when I can get them in bulk?<p>Far more efficient.  Not to mention reducing the number of opportunities for tampering.