Got a Co.uk Domain? Nominet Plans Changes to Whois and Policies for GDPR

The co.uk domain name registry Nominet recently held a public consultation on how they were planning on dealing with GDPR.

That consultation closed a couple of weeks ago and they’ve since made public how they intend on changing their policies and processes to deal with GDPR.

At the moment when you register a *.uk domain name you can choose to “opt out” of the public whois if you are not “trading” ie. doing business with the co.uk domain name you’re registering.

Businesses and any individual or entity cannot currently “opt out” of the public whois.

So what is going to be changing?

The most obvious and important change is in relation to how the public whois will operate.

So let’s look at the current setup before turning to the future.

Here’s an example of the current public whois records for a co.uk domain name (one of ours!):

Domain name:
blacknighthosting.co.uk

Registrant:
Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd

Trading as:
Blacknight

Registrant type:
Non-UK Corporation

Registrant’s address:
Unit 12a
Barrowside Business Park
Sleaty Road, Graiguecullen
Carlow
Carlow
R93 X265
Ireland

Data validation:
The registrar is responsible for having checked these contact details

Registrar:
Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd t/a Blacknight Solutions [Tag = BLACKNIGHT-IE]
URL: http://www.blacknight.com

Relevant dates:
Registered on: 08-Jan-2007
Expiry date: 08-Jan-2019
Last updated: 25-Apr-2018

Registration status:
Registered until expiry date.

Name servers:
ns.blacknightsolutions.com
ns2.blacknightsolutions.com

WHOIS lookup made at 15:01:13 25-Apr-2018

You’ll notice that neither the email address nor phone number is available in the public whois. The data is collected by us and passed on to the registry (Nominet), but it is not made available to the public.

For a private individual who is not doing business (not trading) the amount of data made public is even less, as the physical address is replaced with the notice:

The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their address omitted from the WHOIS service.

Once the new policies come into effect next month all registrations will be opted out by default AND the opt out will include removal of the registrant name as well as their address.

The new whois will probably end up looking something like:

Domain name:
blacknighthosting.co.uk

Registrar:
Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd t/a Blacknight Solutions [Tag = BLACKNIGHT-IE]
URL: http://www.blacknight.com

Relevant dates:
Registered on: 08-Jan-2007
Expiry date: 08-Jan-2019
Last updated: 25-Apr-2018

Registration status: Registered until expiry date.

Name servers:
ns.blacknightsolutions.com
ns2.blacknightsolutions.com

If you are a registrant of a .co.uk domain name you will be able to choose to “opt in” and have your details published in whois. However, as previously noted, the default will be to opt everyone out.