Whois for .NL domains hides personal information

Private registration default for all .NL domains

[lammert]

In the Netherlands privacy laws are quite strict, and there has been a discussion for some time if the information displayed with a whois query was within those laws. The SIDN which governs the .NL ccTLD announced some time ago to filter all personal information. This filter is now in effect and since January 12. 2010 the whois information for .NL domains doesn't display any personal information anymore. The web interface of the SIDN still displays the name of the registrant, but the direct interface via the command line only displays the registrar and the name servers. This means the end of email harvesters which scrape the .NL domain information. Interesting to see when other registration bodies start to implement similar filters.

More info: SIDN announcement [sidn.nl]

[Leosghost]

Afnic [afnic.fr]..( the french dot fr registrations authority ) have been doing this for years ..
All dot fr whois queries will give you is the name of the registrar ..and an ability to "contact" the admin contact of a dot fr domain.

[encyclo]

This is excellent news for .nl domain holders, whois has been a massive privacy problem for years so it's good to see the registries acting on this.

If I understand correctly, the implementation is similar to that of the .ca ccTLD (which is the one I know best), in that private individuals have their data hidden, but commercial entities have their details still shown in whois. Is this the case?

I doubt, however, that any of the gTLDs will be moved by this, as the registrars make a huge amount of money offering "private" registrations and they would lobby hard against such a change for .com etc.

[lammert]

Both data for individuals and commercial entities are hidden. The text suggest otherwise, but in a separate explanation the SIDN wrote that it is difficult for them to make a decision for all the existing domains if they are currently used for private purposes or not. They therefore also hide all personal information for companies. The only thing visible via their web interface is the company name and the admin email address. A whois query for a company registration via the command line interface doesn't even show the company name, only the registrar, even for large companies like Google:

whois google.nl
[Querying whois.domain-registry.nl]
[whois.domain-registry.nl]
Domain name: google.nl
Status: active

Registrar:
MarkMonitor International LTD
22-26 Albert Embankment
SE1 7TJ
London
United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland

Domain nameservers:
ns1.google.com
ns2.google.com
ns3.google.com
ns4.google.com
Record maintained: NL Domain Registry

I have just checked the whois information for google.fr and google.ca and they both contain detailed information, including email addresses and telephone numbers. So the situation with .nl domains is substantial different from those two countries.

[Leosghost]

Interesting lammert :) I'd never actually noticed that I have all my dot frs set to "private" ( even my company ones are "private" ..all were bought with the same "pro" account )..hence their "details" don't show up ..

At least one french registrar offers "private" at no extra cost on dotfr ..but says that they cannot do so for dotcom ( even if one paid )..and yet their USA site offers "private" for dotcom at no extra cost ..

Totally illogical ..

They "sniff" to see where you are registering from ..