As far as I can tell from the article, this issue came up due to a change in the contact information. The changed involved an error that resulted in placeholde

As far as I can tell from the article, this issue came up due to a change in the contact information. The changed involved an error that resulted in placeholder contact information being replaced by outdated personal contact information. This error was due to the registrant or registrar. That left ICANN in a tricky situation. The registrar was pushing them this modified contact information, so they needed verification. Waiting until the next time the domain name is renewed is not a good option because that can be years down the road. That is especially true if this happened immediately after renewal. (The article was not clear whether the auto-renewal of the privacy service occurred during domain name renewal.) This opens up an opportunity to abuse the system. Of course refusing to changed the DNS records until the updated contact information was verified is an option. It is probably a process error on ICANN's part, a process that is probably more a result of changes to policies than malice. Still, changing the policy does not change things all that much. In that case the registrar would have to take action because the privacy service was not renewed. They would probably end up doing the same thing as ICANN. If they didn't, the system would be ripe for abuse yet again.