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Whois officially died today
Domain registries and registrars are no longer obliged to offer Whois services as of today, the deadline ICANN set for formally sunsetting the protocol.
It’s been replaced by RDAP, the newer Registration Data Access Protocol, which offers a more structured way to deliver domain ownership information.
Under ICANN’s standard Registry Agreement and Registrar Accreditation Agreement, January 28 marks the end of the RDAP “ramp up period” and the moment Whois becomes purely optional.
I expect many registrars will offer Whois and RDAP in parallel for a while, so ingrained in internet architecture is the older protocol. Likewise, the term “Whois” will likely be used colloquially to refer to RDAP for some time.
The data delivered by RDAP is not substantially different to that delivered by Whois, and those who access Whois via a web interface, such as ICANN’s lookup.icann.org, probably won’t notice any difference.
The main headaches will likely be experienced by those using custom software to access Whois over port 43, who may find they have to tweak their code to parse incoming RDAP responses instead.
Importantly, the switch to RDAP does not mean users will get data that was already redacted in Whois. Privacy laws such as GDPR apply equally to RDAP.
The only way to obtain private data is contacting the relevant registrar, directly or via ICANN’s Registration Data Request Service, and crossing your fingers.
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