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Did it solve any of the privacy problems of WHOIS?

WHOIS is pretty private at this point, Namecheap, GoDaddy and others set up domain privacy services on every domain for free.

Their mail relays are unreliable though, it is much harder to make a site operator aware of an issue now :c

Whois privacy doesn't work on all domains, for example the .de TLD requires the Whois to be the legal address of the domain owner and doesn't allow any obfuscation (until GDPR). Other domains have similar or different obligations that resultin Whois being not private at all.

From TFA, it doesn't sound like it addressed any privacy concerns but rather was designed to make it accessible for users who needed more than the English character set, and to make search within WHOIS better.

It was the early 90s. No one thought privacy was an issue. The internet only had nice people on it. Doxing wasn't really even a thing yet.

Plus, things like financial theft from individuals weren't really possible using online means only because no one had a bank account online. You still had to do that sort of thing in meatspace.

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