The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will
become enforceable on 25 May 2018. Among others, it will have an
impact on domain name registrations and even domain name related
enforcement of IP rights. The most significant aspect of these
changes is the limitation of publicly available WHOIS data.
Due to the global nature of domain name registrations, all
registrars worldwide will be required to follow the new data
protection regulation as they may handle personal data about data
subjects who are in the EU. The Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers (ICANN), after continuous discussions with
different stakeholders and experts, has developed an interim plan
in order to secure the compliance with the GDPR requirements after
25 May. This plan specifies the legal purposes of processing
personal data during domain name registrations and the scope of
data registrars and registries can collect and process. They can
collect full Thick WHOIS data,
