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Comment by notRobot | Hacker News Reader

> Progress has been slow going, in large part because commercial entities desperately want access to the full registration data of domains – which includes people’s home addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses – and have been trying to find ways around the privacy protections.

Ouch. This is going to make it very hard for people to host content on the web anonymously, forcing them to link their entire identity to their website. This sucks.

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Some ccTLDs even make it impossible to use privacy protection the last time I read about the matter, like for example the .in ccTLD.

The next logical step will be to link whois records with your national digital ID. It will probably happen eventually, as most govts and corporations seem determined to destroy privacy while providing a thin illusion of it.

Yes, there is a concerted effort by wealthy string pullers to invade every facet of the little people's lives so that we have no recourse when we're eventually stripped of our remaining rights by the captured government. We'll have to swear fealty to neo-feudalist lords for protection. See: Cato institute politics.

Is it just the wealthy? In the age of cancel culture I also see individuals scouting every facet of other individuals’ lives, looking to doxx them or out them as failing some purity test. Deplatforming for political gain also is an anti privacy position. I feel like everyone, not just big corporations, is waging these battles.

It's just the wealthy who are bankrolling the capture and dismantling of government, yes. If you haven't noticed, wealthy people/corps have the most influence on policy. Deplatforming is something that happens in the realm of entertainment-politics, where the goal appears to be angering or appeasing mobs to keep people distracted from important policy issues and divided on the rest.

Hm? It is changing from a system were it is very hard to host content anonymously to one where it is (domains currently require full name, address, phone and email to register). Not the other way around.

Depends on the country - you do need to provide full info to theregistar.. but they cannot share that if you are a private person - at least over here.

Are you really forced to enter correct personal information for all domains, regardless of TLD and registrar?

I imagine your bank card payments may be somehow traced to your own identity but don't quote me on that.

I guess some crypto options might help that.

Surely Whois information does not include detailed information about past payments?

No, but as long as a payment to a CC is going through, then the registrar assumes you are "identified".

I have accomplished anonymity in this respect (payment tracking) by purchasing visa gift cards with cash and registering a domain with said gift card.

I’m still sure I could be identified somehow.

Funny enough I was planning to do something along the lines of an ICO through this anonymous website/page and provide the ICO funds and transfer the domain itself to whoever identified me as the domain owner.

Yes. https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/contact-verification-2...

> The Whois Accuracy Program Specification of the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) requires registrars to validate and verify certain Whois data fields, which may include contacting you by phone, email or postal mail. Registrars must suspend or delete domain names that are not timely verified.

Let me re-phrase, or ask the question differently: is this enforced? And out of curiosity, is there any reason the registrar for a domain can't be a corporation -- meaning you could either hide behind a shell company, or hire a company with the explicit purpose of anonymizing your domain? Or even hire a person for that matter, who only tracks what domain paid their yearly fee?

In my experience they only check the email. Considering that domain registrars operate on razor thin margins I doubt they would bother sending snail mail to validate addresses, for instance.

This is the whois privacy model used by many registrars already. The one issue is that ICANN then views the registrar as the rightful owner of the domain, which could cause issues with e.g. a registrar bankruptcy if the creditors decide to make use of that to sell off domains.

To some extent they seem to do. For instance I had forgotten to update the WHOIS record for phone number when my number had changed and after some months I started getting reminders whenever I logged into my registrar's site that the phone number was not reachable and that I need to update it. But no emails, and certainly no paper mails regarding this. But no enforcement. Nothing happened even though I dragged my feet updating my phone number for a considerable time.

In my experience only phone numbers and email addresses are verified, and only on initial domain registration. Post registration I get regular "ICANN verification" emails which all pretty much say to only act if there's incorrect information.

With the exception of the .nyc TLD I've been able to use a PO Box and a forwarding phone number for registrations across registrars for years. .nyc provided no way to demonstration the required NYC nexus except for the postal address to be a physical building in New York City so I let that domain lapse.

That gives me an idea. A privacy oriented NGO could create an address and agree to publicly upload all letters received and allow the users to read the mail anonymously.

Time to use a proxy. https://njal.la/

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