Internet authority ICANN say that they have proposed a new model for WHOIS policy to comply with European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). They further added that with this proposed reform WHOIS users will be given limited information of domain name registrants.
ICANN say that the old model of WHOIS would disclose the name, email address, physical address and contact number of registrants. By amending this model with respect to GDPR, ICANN say that WHOIS users will be restricted to viewing registrant’s state or province, country and organization only.
According to ICANN, their newly proposed model which is set to anonymize domain name registrants will give out detailed information to only certain certified entities. These authorized entities, ICANN say, would undergo stringent processes in advance to claim this advantage.
Most of the WHOIS records will look much like the ones that are present today, revealed ICANN. They also confirmed that technical data such as the registrar and their abuse contact, registration and expiry dates, status code, name servers etc. would still be up for display.
In closing, ICANN said that the new model will also apply to all the gTLDS – old as well as new. They also added that their proposal is open to comment and feedback at the ICANN 61 meeting scheduled in Puerto Rico this weekend.