Nominet Whois changes could make buying/selling domains much harder

Edwin · Mar 1, 2018

Please read the whole document (it's not long!)
https://www.nominet.uk/nominet-opens-comment-period-gdpr-changes-uk/

In brief: Nominet are proposing to withhold in the Whois the NAME and the ADDRESS of any registrant who has not given explicit permission for the information to be displayed.

That means you'll no longer have any way of knowing who owns which domain name, unless the owners have opted in to having their info displayed.

That in turns means you'll have no way of tracking down the owner of an unresolving domain, nor of seeing who owns domains similar to yours (unless they resolve).

You'll also lose any clue as to who owns domains that are about to drop.

It also means that buyers will have no way of verifying you own your domains that you are trying to sell, unless you opt them all in to having their information displayed in full.

One other change, a more positive one: .uk domains will no longer have to have a UK address for service.

If you think this all sounds a bit nutty, think again - it is driven by changes to privacy laws coming in across the EU. Doesn't mean you can't file an objection or comment - Nominet are calling for comments until 4 April - but please please bear that in mind when formulating your 2p's worth. Nominet have done a lot of wacky things, but in my view this doesn't qualify as one of them (even though I'm frustrated by the changes).

JMI · Mar 1, 2018

I thought we were leaving the EU

amfletchers · Mar 1, 2018

I believe this is good news. 99% of domain owners don’t want to be contacted if they don’t have some kind of way to contact them setup (either a domain for sale page setup or a contact us page).

Not being as easy to verify ownership during a sale will be a downside for sure though.

martin-s · Mar 1, 2018

I think the big question is, how are .com registrars who operate in the EU going to act. Mind you, I don't believe GDPR rules have anything in which would prevent Nominet from operating as they do now.

Whois-Search · Mar 1, 2018

Here is the redline documents:

https://www.nominet.uk/gdpr-changes-uk-redline-documentation/

Found from their search...

ian · Mar 1, 2018

Doesn't concern me on the face of it. If I want a buyer to find me, I'll include my details or put up a web page. If a seller wants evidence of ownership, I'll simply opt a domain in during the discussion where they'll have the added benefit of seeing me physically change the visibility of ownership live.

Edwin · Mar 2, 2018

Another snag, for those without their own tag, is that you’ll have to trust your registrar a lot more because you won’t be able to check the whois record to verify the domain is still in your name.

RobM · Mar 2, 2018

*edit* bah

Murray · Mar 2, 2018

Whois data is good sometimes for researching a person or company, so that will be a bit of a shame

Might be an opportunity for people to sell historic whois records

Nigel · Mar 2, 2018

My own view is that we should not be implementing any new EU laws bearing in mind we voted to leave EU and that is set to happen in March 2019. Looking forward to the day when we will be free from all this pointless regulation.

deleted7/10/23 · Jun 30, 2018

Edwin said:
Another snag, for those without their own tag, is that you’ll have to trust your registrar a lot more because you won’t be able to check the whois record to verify the domain is still in your name.

Certainly un unintended consequence (and I discussed it with Nominet recently) but affecting all TLDs now.

In eth case of .UK overcome if they login to Nominet and look there at the domains, but not having the name "public" I think is a mistake (hiding all the other data by default I agree with)

tifosi · Jun 30, 2018

I had this recently. The privacy data is held at contact level, so it depends on how you've got domains set up: 1:1 or 1:many. (contact:domains)

You can set the whois to show all registrant details for a contact quite easily. If you only want a certain domain to show details simply fork it to a new contact and change the settings.

Positive move from Nominet, and one with easy settings to revert to the original state.

Assumes you're a Nominet member of course, which historically the majority of domain re-sellers / TAF holders are.