The ICANN78  meeting in Hamburg, Germany is upon us, and WHOIS data access issues continue to be of significant concern for businesses and other stakeholders. 

According to our most recent report, Tracer has submitted 3106  WHOIS requests during the time period January-September 2023. Of those 3106 requests, 947 were compliant (30%), 855 did not receive a response (28%), and 1304 were denied (42%). 

 

Of the 947 compliant responses we’ve received this year, 90% resulted in registrant data while 10% resulted in domain suspension/deletion. 

 

Of the 1304 non-compliant responses, 58% took irrelevant action such as forwarding our request to the registrant, while 26% are still citing legal authority. 14% of requests received an auto-response without follow up, and 1% required additional action. 

 

It’s also worth noting that registrar compliance is significantly lower than both proxy and registry compliance.

Lastly, our research has indicated that some of the more egregious infringements have the lowest compliance rates. As set forth below,  Category 1A is the highest threat level classification, and includes things like phishing, fraud and malware. Of the 100 1A domains we’ve submitted this year, we’ve received a compliant response on only 10 of them.

As we have stated, it is critical that ICANN continue to address these WHOIS data access issues in order to protect the privacy rights of individuals without compromising the ability of law enforcement, security, and IP professionals to obtain the critical information they need.