Why are you doing that Whois search? DENIC wants to know
In a taste of what might be coming under EU privacy legislation, DENIC wants you to jump through some new hoops before it lets you see Whois data.
When doing a Whois query on its web site today, the German ccTLD registry first asks you to answer the question: “How do you justify your legitimate interest in accessing the whois data?”
It’s a multiple-choice question, with an extra field for typing in your reasons for doing the query.
Possible answers include “because you think that the use of the domain raises a legal problem”, which appears to be for trademark lawyers, and “because you want to collect information about the domain holder for business purposes”, which appears to be for domainers.
There’s no wrong answer that will deny you access to the Whois record you want to see, but users are warned that their use of Whois data is only to be for “legitimate purposes”, under pain of legal action.
A DENIC spokesperson told DI that the new system was introduced today “for statistical reasons”
“Its aim is just to get a better idea of the DENIC whois usage pattern and of the extent to which different user groups are utilising the extended service,” she said.
The move should be viewed in the context of the incoming General Data Protection Regulation, an EU privacy law that becomes fully implemented in May this year.
While there’s been a lot of focus on how this will effect ICANN and its harem of contracted gTLDs, it’s easy to forget that it affects ccTLDs just as much.
By conducting this mandatory survey of real Whois users, DENIC will presumably be able to gather some useful data that will inform how it stays GDPR-compliant after May.
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Last month, DNS Belgium did the same: https://dnsbelgium.be/en/news/whois-survey. They also provide the option “out of curiosity”, which is of course the “others” category.
Is there a free source for previous domain owners whois data ??