Whois May Be Retired, Says ICANN

readwriteweb.com

4 pointscatalinist3 comments

I think the privacy advocates have gone way overboard on this one. WHOIS is an incredibly useful database; among other things, it provides a way to find people squatting on your trademarks.

There's a simple solution already in place for privacy within WHOIS... almost all registrars offer private registration, and many of them offer it for free.

The point of getting rid of the WHOIS database is to make it harder for people to see what the large businesses are doing with domain registration, etc.

Unfortunately that's not true, I have domains with two registrars/hosts, neither of which offer private registration at all.

When registering UK domains you can opt not to show private information while leaving the tech/admin details in there, I'd be pretty happy if they introduced something like that universally.

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