If you hold a lot of domains, your head is probably spinning, or you’ve discovered what migraines are like. GDPR & EU privacy law is causing registrars and ICANN itself to scramble, trying to create policies to protect privacy for EU domain owners, and simultaneously revamp all privacy policies. It’s a mess. Registrars are doing different things. We domain sellers would’ve liked to continue being able to use public Whois for many reasons —
So buyers can find us easily; So we can go out and find prospective buyers; So escrow services and domain marketplaces can use Whois to confirm ownership; And for general research into who owns what.We now need to find alternate ways to accomplish these things.
What Some Registrars Are Doing About GDPR
What you’ll find on a Whois page varies depending upon the registrar controlling the domain. I’m still exploring how domains of different countries are being handled, but will update as I find things out and post it here.
ENOM: It’s in process. Current blocking of everyone’s info: name, address, email. Enom, now geared towards very large domain resellers, has a helpful blog and subscriber newsletter to update users, but they are still working out how they’ll allow for registrants to opt in and allow some access to their Whois info if they wish. It will not, apparently, be possible to opt to display your info to the entire public; instead they will offer some kind of “Gated” access. At this writing, you cannot opt to allow public access to your Whois information: Name, address and email are all blocked now.
Enom Resellers and other Enom customers have been emailed links to lots of user pages. Here are some:Reseller FAQ Checklist-for-Resellers Transfers: GDPR-Enom Blog The only change I see is that a transfer out has to be approved by Enom (you’d click on an email from Enom), not the gaining registrar. https://www.enom.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Data-Use-Consent-Settings-Pages-Enom.pdf
MONIKER: Offering a helpful work-around for some. This applies to domains registered at Moniker. Moniker is not blocking Whois name, address or email for those in the U.S. However, this might change soon, and perhaps the workaround is for domains that are privacy-enabled. At the bottom of the Whois page, you’ll see a URL where you can find a contact form to reach the owner of any Moniker-regged domain: Domain-Contact.org This url can be found on many Whois service pages, but not Godaddy Whois, which stripped it off. This action on Godaddy’s part is really unhelpful.
GODADDY: Mixed. Godaddy was already masking contact info, so you must go to Godaddy’s Whois to see anything useful. Once you use their whois, names and addresses and even emails (for domains owned by U.S. residents & some other nations) are shown for Godaddy domains, but this info is not shown for domains at other registrars.
DYNADOT: Not blocking U.S. info, yet. The Dynadot Whois for names registered with Dynadot is still public — name, address, email, for owners located in the U.S.
