NTIA Presses ICANN to Probe GoDaddy Masking of Whois Data
ICANN should investigate the decision by domain name registrar GoDaddy to throttle Port 43 (automated bulk) access and mask the information in certain Whois fields, NTIA Administrator David Redl said in a Monday letter to ICANN board Chairman Cherine Chalaby.…
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GoDaddy began throttling and masking in January to help reduce spam calls and emails, it said in a notice. But Redl said the actions "are of grave concern" to NTIA "given the U.S. Government's interest in maintaining a WHOIS service that is quickly accessible for legitimate purposes." It's worried that other registrars and registries could copy GoDaddy's approach, he said. The actions are inconsistent with ICANN's multistakeholder approach and could breach ICANN's registrar accreditation agreement, he said. Redl urged the board to investigate and to consider an ICANN cross-community discussion of the matter. NTIA also wants ICANN to look into allowing other players, such as non-ICANN accredited registrars, to offer enhanced domain name system security features.