ICANN may offer domain registrants more privacy

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 22 March 2007 13:33

Your IT - Home IT

At present, people registering domains must allow their contact details to appear in a public database - but that may change if the recommendations of ICANN's task force on whois services are accepted.

While registrants can fake their contact details, that presents a risk that they will not receive renewal notices and so stand to lose the domain unless they keep track of renewal dates. False information could be used as grounds for cancelling the registration.

Some registrars offer a proxy service (usually at extra cost), substituting their details for the registrants, but the legitimacy of this practice is not completely clear.

While the task force agreed that "New mechanisms to restrict some contact data from publication should be adopted to address privacy concerns", it did not reach 'supermajority' support for any specific proposals.

It is worth noting that when it came to a vote the privacy recommendation was supported by the Non Commercial User Constituency (ie, real people) among others, but the Commercial and Business User, Intellectual Property, and Internet Service Providers and Connectivity Providers constituencies wanted to limit it to 'special circumstances' involving "a reasonable basis for concern... [for] a concrete and real interest in their personal safety or security".

Read the full report then post a comment telling us what you think - should corporate interests override personal privacy?