Axios Codebook Newsletter | February 7, 2019
Cybersecurity stakeholders are pushing U.S. lawmakers to rescue WHOIS, a tool for identifying internet domain ownership that’s been hamstrung by the European Union’s privacy regulations.
Why it matters: WHOIS has been a public address book for domain owners since the earliest days of the internet. A bevy of online investigators — from law enforcement authorities to human rights groups to cybersecurity researchers — have long relied on its data. But the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) deems the information in WHOIS to be too personal to share without a thorough consent agreement.
GDPR, which turns 1 in May, applies to any company doing business with Europe. Many registrars, the authorities who dole out domains (names like “axios.com”), have responded by simply not providing data to WHOIS.
Read the full article by Joe Uchill here.
SOURCE Axios Codebook Newsletter