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RDRS usage hits all-time low

Kevin Murphy, June 27, 2024, 13:39:24 (UTC), Domain Services

Usage of ICANN’s Registration Data Request Service, which lets people submit Whois queries to registrars, hit a new low in May, six months after its launch.

RDRS was used to submit 156 requests for private Whois data in the period, the lowest number to date. In December, there were 173 requests; the peak was 290 the following month.

While requests from law enforcement held at 46, requests from IP holders, which had peaked at 117 in February, dipped a little between April and May, going from 43 to 37.

The mix between approved and denied requests was pretty much unchanged — about 20% of requests get approved and about 70% get denied.

The number of RDRS queries (domain lookups that don’t necessarily result in a request) was also at at all-time monthly low, at 1,393, from a December peak of 2,349 and April’s 1,435. Only a quarter of queries were for supported domains, down from 30% in April.

The wait time for approval shortened a little, having topped out at a massive 14 days in April, to an average of 11.34 days. Denials took on average 9.77 days.

Three more registrars joined the voluntary service in May, and none left. One of the newcomers was a second Alibaba accreditation, which brought in 3.5 million domains and raised the overall service coverage from 57% to 59% of all gTLD domains.

One way of spinning the numbers would be to say that RDRS users have become disillusioned with the service, another would be to say they are done kicking the tires and seeing what they can get away with, have discovered its limitations, and are now using it as intended.

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