Privacy Laws Affecting Domain Registration

Privacy laws such as the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and similar national laws have dramatically reshaped domain registration data practices by restricting the public disclosure of [[registrant]] personal information in [[whois]] databases. Prior to GDPR's 2018 enforcement, WHOIS records typically displayed the registrant's full name, address, phone number, and email. Post-GDPR, [[registrar]] operators must either anonymize this data or provide it only through accredited access mechanisms. [[icann]] introduced the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) and a tiered access model, but tension remains between privacy rights and the legitimate needs of law enforcement, intellectual property rights holders, and security researchers who rely on [[whois-accuracy]] data to investigate [[cybersquatting]] and abuse.