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Comment by anfilt | Hacker News Reader

I really don't see why DNS records should be in the purview of the GDPR. I also think they are not public enough. It can be hard to contact people. Information is outdated, false or just hidden. Usually being able to call the person responsible for a domain and say hey your email server has relaying enabled and pushing out a lot spam gets them to fix it.

I can understand person not wanting to put their address, but I say phone, email, name and points contact should be necessary. It is a public system after all.

Spam can be a problem as well, but these records do serve a purpose. They also are important for ownership of a domain if a dispute was to arise.

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You've obviously never been threatened, harassed or stalked simply for running a blog with real contact information in the whois records.

Stalking really? Threats and harassment. Just tell them to gtfo!

I would be more worried about swatting with the address component. I can see that for corporations/businesses.

>> Just tell them to gtfo!

I see you've also never been threatened before. It doesn't work.

Telling them to GTFO doesn't really comfort you if you receive fake (hopefully) bomb packages at home or whatever else (frequent mailings of poop for example). The local police generally also doesn't do very much for you (unless it's really bad, like a real immediate threat to your life from an actual pipe bomb). Even if they do, that doesn't mean it will stop anytime soon.

In the meantime it's slowly eating away at your sanity: Is this real mail? Can I go outside for groceries without getting stabbed? These are not fun concerns to have to have. Seeing as it's 100% avoidable and unnecessary to have this information available in this way, I don't think it is a bad thing to remove it.

I must be made of sterner stuff. I have had what I suspect was a used condom mailed to me. I have had people call my work before. Calls that just hang up. Lots of spam and other angry emails.

I find it more amusing that people would waste their only life on such stupid things.

I do think the adress requirement is perhaps a bit much for an individual. Thats why I mentioned that. Kinda wish I used a PO box for my domains. However, its already there already. So I dont worry about it much anymore.

The only thing I consider personal is your adress. If your name and phone number and contact email are problem. Then a phone book is just as much of a problem.

You can publish your own personal data as much as you like.

This is about people who don't like that and are forced to do it if they want to own a domain.

And of course phone books are subject to GPDR as well: in a EU country, if you don't want your phone number to appear in the phone book, just inform your phone provider, and your record will be deleted. (I guess in the future you will even have to give explicit consent to let the number appear there.)

> really?

really. Do you suppose that stalking doesn't happen?

ICANN can still hold them. And if you have a legitimate need, you can contact ICANN - proving your own identity - and ask them to forward that request on your behalf. Purpose of the records fulfilled without revealing them to everybody.

Whois isn't DNS.

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