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domains, registrars, and whois contact info. defaulting to hidden? Yes, because ...

[on-list - because ... why not?]


From: "Rick Moen" <rick@linuxmafia.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2019 21:24:09 -0800



(Tangential but possibly amusing trivia:  I checked public whois for my
two domains, and was astonished to see that every single line of contact
information has been replaced with 'REDACTED FOR PRIVACY'.  This is very
much contrary to my wishes and my longtime policy, and I never requested it.
Checking at my registrar, I find that the customer webUI clsims whois
privacy has _not_ been enabled by yr. humble servant, so there is an
'enable privacy' control offered, but the corresponding 'disable privacy'
control is absent.  I've filed a bemused request with their support
staff that they fix, as I've not requested this setting and am evidently
not permitted to turn it off as the webUI thinks it's not on.)


domains, registrars, and whois contact info. defaulting to hidden?  Yes,
because ...
Yes, I think I mentioned it elselist earlier - but can't find it presently.
I think it's mostly law of unintended consequences.
Most notably (conflict between general whois and registrar data
requirements and) EU privacy laws - that last being pretty persnickety,
and having force of law, and most, if not all, registrars, being
quite international - and generally at least having customers/users
including in the EU - and not wanting (or being feasible) to drop those
users/customers.
So, basic side effect of all that, is unless the user/customer very
highly and explicitly opts in, then their contact info. is essentially
hidden from the whois data - even if they've never opted to hide it.
I'd guestimate most registrars communicated about this change ... but
perhaps not ... and/or quietly (might've been overlooked in the "noise"
of semi-regular communications).  I know from at least Gandi.net they were
highly clear on it (but now that I think of it, joker.com may have been
quite silent on it ... or maybe only Jim Stockford was notified about
such).  Another side-effect - most registrars now offer "privacy
protection" for free - whereas they typically used to charge some
small additional fee for that (dis)service.

Yeah, ... sucks.  Defaults matter.  :-/  As does law.
And very often, due to many things (e.g. on The Internet) being
pretty international in nature, often law(s) in one country will
have impact well beyond that one country - often world-wide, or
(effectively) nearly so (probably also matters too,
how much influence, enforcement, trading partner and
economic force or lack thereof, from the country or the like with
whatever laws, ... might have much impact ... or might be
ignored or otherwise dealt with (we'll just move our company
elsewhere)).  EU copyright law and proposed changes also come
to mind ... similar for Australia and some of their rather
boneheaded bits of law (some companies are leaving).
And yes, the US does it too (often not leaders in security
and encryption - much of that may be legacy effect from
much earlier stupidity).  So, yep, ... I'm sure I have some
(much?) earlier email from Gandi.net on that.  Hmmm... can't
find that either (I may not be searching that quite right).
I'm intending to make the info. public again on the domains
I'm owner of ... haven't jumped to it 8-O ... I figured I'd do
it around renewal time or whois data verification time (when
I go check and interact with the registrar data and such anyway).

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