ICANN 80: WHOIS Update

The ICANN 80 meeting in Kigali, Rwanda 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 1407 WHOIS requests during the time period of January-May 2024. Of those 1407 requests, 51 were compliant (4%), 420 did not receive a response (30%), and 936 were denied (66%).

Of the 936 non-compliant responses, 54% took irrelevant action such as forwarding our request to the registrant, while 35% cited legal authority. 5% of requests received an auto-response without a follow up response. On a positive note,  6% of our requests resulted in domain suspension/deletion.

Of the 1407 requests for registrant data, we attempted to submit 863 requests via the Registration Data Request System (RDRS). 242 were successfully submitted through RDRS, while 619 of those domains were registered to non-participating registrars.

Of the 242 requests submitted via RDRS, 52 requests were marked as “approved” in RDRS and of that 18 of them actually received registrant data.

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.