New Cayman Islands law forces Uniregistry to change Whois policy.
Domain name registrar Uniregistry is making the publication of Whois data opt-in for registrants.
The move is in response to a new Cayman Islands Data Protection Law. Think of it as the Cayman Islands’ version of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.
Many of Uniregistry’s clients are domain name investors who want their information disclosed in Whois and they will be able to opt-in to doing this.
Technically, ICANN requires all registrars to provide a way for their customers to opt-in to have their information published in Whois but few have enabled this capability.
For domains with masked Whois records, Uniregistry will provide a form for people to contact the domain owner.
Most (but not all) other big domain name registrars began masking Whois data carte blanche after GDPR went into effect in May even though the law doesn’t cover non-EU citizen/resident data.
If processing is done by an EU company, it covers any personal data regardless of where it comes from.
I am hoping that Tucows, the second largest registrar worldwide, will follow Uniregistry’s action and give the opportunity to registrants to opt in to whois if they wish. From experience, in a year’s period prior to implementing GDPR, I have sold over 50 domain names through whois contacts. Since the implementation of GDPR, I have sold nothing. I cannot even put my domain names in auctions since there is no way to verify my ownership of the domain name other than changing the DNS which I refuse to do. I contacted major personnel at Tucows who promised that this would happen in the near future. Unfortunately I am still waiting and hoping.
Does adding TXT fields to the zones constitute changing the dns or did you mean changing the name servers?
That, actually, sucks!
We, at Epik, have a solution for this problem. It’s a new project that we’re launching in a few days. It’s called “WhoQ”.
WhoQ will help registries, registrars & registrants to overcome this problem. It’s designed to flip this bad arrangement into a revenue stream.
Please contact me directly or visit our website for more info: WhoQ.com
Oh, and did I mention its completely FREE!?
—
Sufyan Alani
Director Of Business Development
Epik.com
[email protected]
GDPR.sucks approves this message.
Andrew
GDPR covers all data processed in the EU. It doesn’t matter if the registrant is an EU resident or not.
Michele
Thanks. I was thinking of no -eu registrars but didn’t state that
Andrew
There are several non-EU registrars who rely on backend services based in the EU who are subject to GDPR as well. Bear in mind of course that GDPR is just the better known of privacy laws. There are plenty of other countries enacting very similar legislation.
Michele