ICANN 77: WHOIS Update

The ICANN 77 meeting in Washington, D.C. is upon us, and WHOIS data access issues continue to be of significant concern for businesses and other stakeholders.

According to our most recent report, Tracer has submitted 1597 WHOIS requests during the time period January-April 2023. Of those 1597 requests, 549 were compliant (34%), 424 did not receive a response (27%), and 624 were denied (39%). 

Of the 549 compliant responses we’ve received this year, 95% resulted in registrant data while 5% resulted in domain suspension/deletion. 

Of the 624 non-compliant responses, 58% took irrelevant action such as forwarding our request to the registrant, while 26% are still citing legal authority. The remaining 16% received an auto-response without follow up. 

It’s also worth noting that registrar compliance is significantly lower than both proxy and registry compliance. 

As we have stated, it  is critical that ICANN continue to address these WHOIS data access issues in order to protect the privacy rights of individuals without compromising the ability of law enforcement, security, and IP professionals to obtain the critical information they need.