In May 2018, Tucows moved to redact all personal data from the default public Whois in order to comply with the GDPR1 and other data protection laws. Since then, the primary way for third parties to access domain name registration data that we hold is to place a request through our Tiered Access Compliance and […]
It’s been quite some time since our last Tiered Access statistics update. In the interim, we’ve been hard at work managing requests for disclosure of previously public registration data and, before jumping into the numbers, we wanted to share what this work looks like. Our review process Our Tiered Access team reviews each data disclosure […]
The Internet as we know it may be fairly new, but that short history doesn’t mean it’s not also filled with cycles and repetition. Back in 2003, ICANN convened the Whois Task Force, intended to improve the ability of Whois services to contribute to the stability and security of the Internet while balancing the need […]
Tucows provides reasonable, lawful access to non-public registration data; this means constantly working to balance the privacy rights of registrants against the rights of third parties, most of which, in our experience, are related to intellectual property rights (90% of all requests). In addition to the usual statistics, this update also includes a deep dive […]
It has been more than a year since Tucows launched our Tiered Access Compliance & Operations portal, sometimes called “Gated Whois,” and it’s been around six months since we shared our first set of statistics on how and by whom this platform is being used. Today’s update brings our statistics current through mid-October 2019. We […]
Tucows’ Tiered Access Compliance & Operations portal (which we commonly refer to as a “Tiered Access Directory” or “gated Whois”) launched at the end of May 2018. With its launch, our public Whois “went dark.” From that date forward, all personal registrant data has been redacted from the public Whois by default, and made accessible […]
Over the past few months, we’ve talked quite a bit about the concept of our Tiered Access registration directory, also referred to by its informal title, “gated Whois”. This has sparked many questions from our reseller partners and other interested parties who are curious about how the system works, who may have access, and what […]
