By Arlene Paredes
One of the longstanding issues in ICANN is the situation over the WHOIS database. Every registrant, upon buying a domain name, is required to input WHOIS data that will be made publicly available to anyone who would run a search online. WHOIS data includes the registrant’s name and contact details including country, e-mail address, contact numbers, etc. However, a significant number of registrants refuse to input accurate data into the WHOIS database. This poses problems on illegal cyber activities, in which a person running a website of say, for example, a gambling site, could not be easily reached for notices and complaints.
In other cases, consider a potential buyer of a domain name that is taken (not available anymore). Normally, when you want a domain name that is already taken, you go to WHOIS database to get information on who had bought the domain name, when will it expire, etc. However, since registrants are not inputting accurate data, you would find it difficult to negotiate with the current owner unless the registrar of the current owner would broker the domain sales for you. This is why the WHOIS accuracy issue
remains a problem to be solved for ICANN with the help of the Internet community.
Overall, ICANN wants to maintain and protect the privacy of the registrants. So it is now considering designing a process in which registrants could safely input accurate data without worrying about privacy issues. ICANN wants to respect the registrants’ wish for privacy but at the same time, it wants to be able to get the necessary information about a registrant to prevent illegal cyber activities and encourage a fairer e-commerce flow in the Internet.
It is not expected that this is going to be resolved soon, but ICANN wants the regular Internet users to participate in the process, such that the users could report to ICANN or seek the help of their registrars in case they find suspicious WHOIS data.
ICANN on Wednesday will talk more about WHOIS data and how to respond to the ongoing Internet threats.
