More than 5 percent of all domains are registered with obviously false information, which could hamper cybercrime investigations, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) stated in a report released on Wednesday.

The report, originally published to within the U.S. government on November 4, states that 2.31 million domain names, about 5.14 percent) used contact information that could not be true, such as the phone number (999) 999-9999 or XXXXX for a postal code. The false information could hobble cybercrime investigations that rely on accurate information to locate domain owners for questioning.

The report comes after the United States and the international community argued over whether the United States should continue to remain in control of critical parts of the Internet. Moreover, problems with the domain name system have been long standing, as privacy advocates and law enforcement argue over whether domain owners should be allowed to be anonymous.

According to the GAO report, about 8.65 percent of domain names are registered with one piece of patently false or incomplete data. When GAO researchers sent reports to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which manages domain names and registrars, only a quarter of the 45 reported domains were updated with information that did not appear to be false. Three-quarters of the complaints were unresolved after 30 days.