Reglikedomain industry desk

Know who owns Voicemail.app? — Want to

Know who owns Voicemail.app? — Want to

I do. But unless I told you that, you would have no way of knowing. You can blame European governments for that.

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, which goes into effect on May 25, 2018, offers many privacy protections. Many people have concluded that the law prohibits domain name registrars and registries from publishing private data in WHOIS, the database of domain name technical and ownership information.

Whois has been public for decades and is relied upon by security researchers, law enforcement, brand owners and journalists. Now it’s going away.

The Whois record for voicemail.app has my state, country and organization name. If I registered the domain under my personal name, you wouldn’t see any information that could trace the domain to me.

That’s going to cause a lot of problems. You’ll read regarding these problems in the coming months.

Also on the wire

Other reporting from the domain desk.

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