ICANN announced late last night that they had taken RADAR, which is essentially an extranet for registrars, offline due to security issues. Here's the official announcement: ICANN has taken its registrar contact information database (RADAR) offline temporarily. This action was taken as a precautionary measure after it was learned that an unauthorized party viewed data … [Read more...] about ICANN’s Registrar Extranet Taken Offline Due to Security Issues
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Help ICANN Fix Whois Conflicts With Data Privacy Law!
ICANN has opened a comment period in relation to whois conflicts with local law / data privacy law. Of course anytime ICANN, or anyone else, tries to make any changes to whois policy there are issues. Whois is, for a variety of reasons, an emotive subject. One of the areas that Article 29, several registries located in the EU and a number of registrars (including … [Read more...] about Help ICANN Fix Whois Conflicts With Data Privacy Law!
OVH Pulled Up By ICANN Due To Whois Format
OVH, a French registrar and hosting provider, has been sent a breach notice by ICANN. The registrar had not updated its whois format to be compliant with the 2013 RAA. So for example, a whois lookup on ovh.net currently returns: # local time : Friday, 16-May-2014 15:22:25 CEST # gmt time : Friday, 16-May-2014 13:22:25 GMT # last modify : … [Read more...] about OVH Pulled Up By ICANN Due To Whois Format
Chinese Registrar Bizcn Hit With Breach Notice
Chinese registrar BizCN.com has been hit with a breach notice by ICANN. The registrar might not have exactly a "stellar" reputation in certain circles as it's often associated with "rogue online pharmacies" and other forms of online abuse. ICANN's letter to BizCN outlines a number of issues associated with a couple of domains specifically rapetube.org … [Read more...] about Chinese Registrar Bizcn Hit With Breach Notice
Small French Registrar Smacked by ICANN Compliance
A small French registrar based in Paris has been sent a breach notice by ICANN's compliance team. Mistername appears to be a very small registrar and from what I can gather has less than 100 names on its accreditation (if it has more then I'm obviously looking in the wrong place!). The Mistername site is incredibly rudimentary and seems to consist of only a couple of … [Read more...] about Small French Registrar Smacked by ICANN Compliance
NameCheap Gets Slapped By ICANN
NameCheap has been sent a breach notice by ICANN's Compliance department. The notice, which was sent yesterday, shows that ICANN has been trying to get a response from NameCheap since the middle of March of this year. NameCheap, apparently, is not meeting its contractual obligations to: keep data about domain name registrants and their dealings with NameCheap list … [Read more...] about NameCheap Gets Slapped By ICANN
Former ICANN Board Member To Congress – ICANN Needs Oversight
Karl Auerbach has written a quite long but very detailed and well thought out letter to Congress. It's not clear which members of Congress were sent the letter. Karl Auerbach is a former member of ICANN's board and is probably best remembered by many as having taken ICANN to court (and winning) in order to gain access to the organisation's financial records. The letter … [Read more...] about Former ICANN Board Member To Congress – ICANN Needs Oversight
European Data Protection Supervisor Smacks ICANN Over Privacy Issues With 2013 RAA
ICANN has been sent a letter by the European Data Protection Supervisor calling them out with respect to both data collection, retention and privacy within the context of the 2013 Registrar contract (RAA). The letter is the first instance of one, to my knowledge, which makes reference to the ECJ's recent ruling that rendered the data retention directive null and … [Read more...] about European Data Protection Supervisor Smacks ICANN Over Privacy Issues With 2013 RAA
ICANN Rolling Out New Site
It's that time again - yet another new iteration of the ICANN website ... This time instead of simply "throwing the switch" ICANN are rolling out the site in phases .. According to ICANN's Chris Gift the new site is going to be a big improvement: "We had three objectives for the new site: improve transparency of ICANN by making information easier to find, make it … [Read more...] about ICANN Rolling Out New Site
Closed Generics The Final Battle?
Over the past couple of years I've posted several times on the issue of "closed generics". In essence these are new TLD applications where the string is a "generic term" AND the applicant wanted to keep all domains in the registry for their own use. The baseline registry agreement with ICANN now contains language that resolves the issue, or at least it would appear to do … [Read more...] about Closed Generics The Final Battle?