On Thu, Jul 17, 2025 at 1:43 PM Mel Beckman via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote: [snip from GoDaddy] Currently, we collect Registrant, Administrative, Billing, and Technical
contacts. Going forward, we'll collect the minimum data required by each domain registry.
Most registries will be moving to the minimum data set, so Technical, Administrative, and Billing contacts will no longer be collected or displayed in WhoIs/RDDS.
On or after August 21, 2025, we'll delete extra contact data and the registrant fax number from our systems unless the registry specifically requires that data.
[snip, then from Mel]
Has anybody else got ideas on the impact of this going forward? I’m not in the domain resale business, but I am in the business of troubleshooting network problems. :-)
One thing that comes to mind: the (admittedly long-tail) activity of reclamation of fallow / misfiled / "mis-owned" domains. For good or ill, the previous WHOIS model had its own redundancy -- three different contacts, two of which with authority to make technical changes, as well as the power conferred by being the named registrant. On at least three occasions, after M&A activity, I've had to leverage any and all of these to "fix" a domain's ownership, in order to make changes -- in some cases years, or in at least one case *decades* later. This has involved everything from recreating dead email addresses, to calling people who didn't work there anymore, to digging up contracts and printing them on letterhead, etc. ... all to restore the power to make changes. Of course, that's me as an ISP-scarred end user, not as a registry operator. Maybe these alternate paths are an attack surface that should be eliminated. But "this entity used to have the authority to manage this domain, and I am the direct descendant of that entity, lemme in" is gonna get harder. So while I can see removing the WHOIS from visibility, *deleting* so that even the *registrar* doesn't have it anymore feels like it destroys information that would still have value. Royce