More than a year ago, ICANN adopted a policy that redacted sensitive domain name registration data from public view to bring Whois into compliance with GDPR. The key data elements shielded were registrant email addresses and street addresses. The loss of free, unrestricted access to all DNS registration data was a...
On February 7, ICANN released an initial report on the next step in the reform of Whois. The report will be open for public comment until March 23, 2020. In the analysis below, we make it clear what issues defenders of privacy and individual rights should address in their comments....
A presentation at the recent RIPE79 gives us some initial insight into the recursive resolution of Domain Name System (DNS) queries. Who performs recursive resolution and therefore has access to DNS query data is at the center the DNS over HTTPS (DoH) debate. But as we’ll explain below, the data...
DNS over HTTPS (DoH) is a new IETF standard that modifies DNS to encrypt its queries. The stated objective of the new standard is to improve the security and confidentiality of DNS queries and reduce latency. Ever since we did our first study on the use of PKI in routing,...
The European Commission (EC) has finally weighed in on the recommendations of ICANN's Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP). The EPDP is reforming WHOIS to make it consistent with GDPR and privacy rights. The EC comments, we are happy to report, are well aligned with the positions of privacy advocates. This...
March 4 was a landmark day in the history of Whois. The final report of ICANN’s Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP), setting out a new, more or less privacy-compliant Whois policy, was approved by the GNSO Council, ICANN’s policy development organ for domain names. The policy recommendations in that report,...
The ICANN policy process for bringing Whois into compliance with privacy law has just about reached the end of its first phase (we will report more on that when it releases the final report). The next phase will focus on what is sometimes called "access" but is more accurately described...
Facebook did not have a good 2018. Treating its customers' personal information as a commodity, it was revealed by New York Times that “For years, Facebook gave some of the world’s largest technology companies more intrusive access to users’ personal data than it has disclosed, effectively exempting those business partners...
On the day before the American Thanksgiving holiday, ICANN released the initial report of the policy development process that is trying to reform Whois. Jokes about turkeys were probably inevitable, but to the EPDP members who have spent months of practically non-stop work on it (including two IGP partners), that sign of progress was something to...
ICANN's expedited policy development process (EPDP) to make Whois compatible with GDPR is making progress, albeit very slowly. Another round of face to face meetings will be held at ICANN 63 in Barcelona, Spain beginning Saturday October 20. But some participants in the group are becoming uneasy about ICANN CEO...
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