The IT Nerd

I just came across this story that has some great news if you are Canadian and have a .ca domain. Starting June 10th, all the Whois information (click here for an explanation) for .ca domains will be hidden from view. Why is this significant? Here’s a concrete example. Mary Smith decides to start a baking company out of her home. So she registers marysbaking.com so that she can get some extra exposure. If I do a whois lookup for marysbaking.com using whois.net or any number of other domain lookup tools, this is what I might find:

WHOIS information for: marysbaking.com:

Registrant:

Mary Smith
123 Any Street
Anytown, WA 96052-333
US

Domain name: MARYSBAKING.COM

Administrative Contact:
Mary Smith mary@marysbaking.com
Mary Smith
123 Any Street
Anytown, WA 96052-333
US
+1.555-555-1234

Technical Contact:
Mary Smith mary@marysbaking.com
Mary Smith
123 Any Street
Anytown, WA 96052-333
US
+1.555-555-1234

Given that this is Mary’s home address, this is a huge invasion to her privacy. It basically means that as the system currently stands, spammers, scammers, and stalkers can use the information in any way they see fit. Just think of all the bad stuff that could happen. But on June 10th, they’re out of luck in terms of getting this info. That’s because Canada has a privacy law called the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (or PIPEDA for short) which regulates how private-sector organizations collect, use and disclose personal information in the course of conducting business. This change brings those who register .ca domains as well as CIRA (the organization who oversees .ca registrations) into line with PIPEDA making Canada the leader in this area.

As always, there is a catch:

“Canadians who already own domain names won’t enjoy the same luxury of privacy right away. Given that their Whois data are already available on third-party websites, there’s little the registration authority can do to reign in that information.”

That kind of sucks, although there is a way around that. Some registrars such as Domainsatcost.ca have a privacy feature that gives you that sort of protection now. If you have a .ca domain, you may want to check to see if your registrar offers this feature.

This is one more reason why it’s great to be a Canadian.

This entry was posted on May 26, 2008 at 9:36 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Canada, PIPEDA, Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.