“Data Protected” Welcome to GDPR

I was curious to see how Whois would look with GDPR upon us. I did a Whois search for a domain name registered at Enom, and “Data Protected” is the term that is input in many of the registrant fields. The email address is listed as noreply@data-protected.net and there is no phone number for the registrant.

Here’s a screenshot of a Whois lookup I did at Enom this morning to show you how (at least some of) their Whois records look in the wake of GDPR implementation:

The majority of my domain names are registered at GoDaddy, and it looks like the company is not blocking my Whois information. I also checked one of my domain names at Name Bright, and the Whois information is showing.

I checked a few other names at Enom and Network Solutions, and I noticed that many were not showing Whois results. I am not sure if that is because their system is being updated or if something else is going on with Whois right now. I tried Whois lookups at several registrars and ICANN and noticed the same lack of Whois results for some names at several websites.

With GDPR in effect now, it remains to be seen what impact it will have on the business of domain investing. I do not plan to make any changes to what I do here unless I learn that I need to make changes to avoid penalties.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

7 COMMENTS

    • I just initiated some transfers to Uniregistry and it appears to be working fine. I’m in Australia and it’s 26 May and just checked, it’s now about 02:00am in New York 26 May.

      For a little while the usual message appeared saying a Form of Authorisation will be required, but then it vanished and the message appeared:

      “Your transfers are ready and you will need to confirm payment and begin.”

      So that step is bypassed, presumably in Europe too. It’s now far faster but I miss the extra layer of security. Presumably Uniregistry have been very busy and will update the FOA message or maybe it still applies in some circumstances.

  1. Since there has been no official white paper from ICANN about WHOIS on time – not the spastic attempts made recently, to meet the GDPR deadline – the WHOIS info is now officially broken.

    Welcome to the brave new world of domaining.

  2. I wonder if enom/tucow are accumulating all of the emails sent to
    noreply at data-protected ,net.
    If so, what could they do with all of that information/data?

    I thought the registrars were offering the option to opt out of the ‘blank’ whois.

    Does enom/tucow offer that option?

  3. It looks like the mass whois update was caused by a glitch. I contacted ENOM three days and I received the following reply today:

    ——————–
    Hey,

    Thanks for reaching out.

    We have an ongoing issue with the domain contact management. The error that you have received is exactly related and we are working on it as we speak.

    Please give us some time to resolve this and we will get back to you.

    let us know if there is anything else.

    Have a great day!
    Rahul
    ——————–

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