Over the past few months, we’ve talked quite a bit about the concept of our Tiered Access registration directory, also referred to by its informal title, “gated Whois”. This has sparked many questions from our reseller partners and other interested parties who are curious about how the system works, who may have access, and what the accreditation process looks like. Today, we’ll address these topics and discuss why we believe a gated Whois system is the best solution for our platform, our resellers, and our registrants.

Why are we implementing a gated Whois?

As we’ve written before, in updating our platform to achieve GDPR compliance, we used data privacy laws as our starting point. We worked from the ground up to design processes that we believe comply with those laws and their underlying principles, and adhere to our contractual requirements with ICANN and other TLD registries to the fullest extent possible. The changes we made, including the decision to remove contact data from the public Whois, are necessary to protect ourselves and our reseller partners from the possible legal repercussions of improperly processing or exposing personal data. Furthermore, we believe this change to the public Whois makes sense — data protection should be extended to all domain owners, and we don’t see any legal basis or justifiable need to publicly display unredacted contact data.

That said, we acknowledge that, in many cases, third parties may have a real, justifiable need to access a registrant’s personal data, and these legitimate interests are also provided for within the GDPR’s definition of “lawful processing”. By restricting the general public’s access to personal data and introducing our Tiered Access registration data directory, we are complying with the GDPR and extending its protections to all registrants on our platform while ensuring that those with a legitimate legal basis have access to the data they need in order to protect the public and exercise their own rights.

Who will have access and how will they be accredited?

Through a rigorous authentication process, Tucows will ensure that only those with a legitimate interest are given access to the gated Whois system and that this access is restricted to only those data elements that the user needs. Parties with a “legitimate interest” may include law enforcement agents, members of the security community, and commercial litigators.

At present, we are actively responding to requests for accreditation from members of those communities. In the near future, interested parties will be able to click an application link on tieredaccess.com to submit an email with the required application information. This will include the requestor’s first and last name, organization, and email address, which specific domains they want to access, and the requested duration of access. They will also be asked to provide any other pertinent details such as the legal basis for the request.

What data will be displayed in the Tiered Access Directory?

There are three factors, that in combination, determine what contact data will be visible to an accredited Tiered Access user by default: the user’s permission access level, the registrant’s data use consent settings, and whether the domain is privacy-protected.

Permission Access Levels for Accredited Users

In designing our gated Whois system, we started from the principle of data minimization and determined that a Tiered Access directory was the best way to protect the privacy of our customers while providing parties with legitimate interest access to relevant registrant data. At a high level there are three permission access tiers, and within each we can further restrict permissions by many different factors.

Through conversations with stakeholders, we determined three major categories of requestors: law enforcement, commercial litigation interests, and security researchers. We then examined the various personal data points we collect and identified those which are most pertinent to the above-mentioned parties. We have done our best to balance individual privacy and the rights of registrants with the rights of law enforcement and the people they protect, the rights of commercial litigators and their clients, and the need for a safe and secure Internet.

Tier One – Law Enforcement Authorities

Users within this tier must be a member of a law enforcement authority with jurisdiction over Tucows or one of its companies, and are provided access to the widest range of registrant data available through our Tiered Access system. Our aim is to supply these parties with data elements that may be relevant to a legal investigation while still respecting the registrant’s privacy and consent choices.

Please Note: For the small subset of ccTLDs whose registries contractually require the admin and tech contact info, a portion of those datasets may be included in tier-one results.

Tier Two – Commercial Litigators

Access for users within this tier will be limited to those elements deemed necessary to exercise their clients’ rights to pursue legal action against the owner of a domain registered on our platform.

Tier Three – Security Community Members

Users belonging to this tier provide a valuable public service by examining trends in online criminal activity, helping to make the Internet safer for everyone. They may only view a limited set of information because, while they inarguably play an important role in online security, they have no official jurisdiction or legal authority.

Data Use Consent Settings and Whois Privacy Status

For domains without Whois Privacy protection, the Tiered Access system (gated Whois) can display the following data:

• Data that we require by contract: registrant name, country, email, and organization (if applicable)
• Data that the registry requires by contract
• Data which we have consent from the registrant to process

This means that, in instances where the registry does not contractually require any data elements and we do not have consent to process any additional elements, only the minimum data that we require contractually will be shown.

Tip: Through a quick search on our Data Use Information Page, you can determine which data are processed as per the registry’s contract and which are processed by consent.

For domains with Whois Privacy protection, the Tiered Access system will only display the Whois Privacy contact data, just as it appears for privacy-protected domains in the public Whois. It’s also important to note that the process to reveal the underlying ownership information has not changed with the introduction of a gated Whois; we would still require the tiered-access-accredited party to provide a court order, subpoena, or similar legal justification before our Compliance team would provide the underlying contact data. In short, all the benefits of Whois Privacy carry over into our gated Whois system.

Further Customizing User Access

As we outlined above, the actual data elements visible by default to any accredited user of the Tiered Access system depend not only on the data use consent settings and privacy status of the domain, but also on the accredited user’s permission access level. On top of these controlling factors, we can also place additional custom restrictions on a user’s account.

Our Tiered Access system uses the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP), developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force as an eventual replacement for the current WHOIS protocol. One of the essential benefits of using RDAP is that it allows us to define user access options at a very granular level. We can, for example, restrict the number of domains a user can query per day, the data fields returned by each query, which specific domains can be queried, and which data elements are returned in the response. We can also set the specific duration for which a user’s account remains active.

This means that some users may have access to the full set of registrant data we hold, restricted only based on the registrant’s data use consent settings and the Whois Privacy status of the domain. For other users, it may be that only the registrant’s email address, only the registrant’s name and country, or, perhaps, only contract-based data, will be shared.

What’s important to take away is this: our high-level tiers are a starting point; we have the flexibility to customize as needed and make adjustments as we find the best way to balance the rights of multiple parties.

How will the Tiered Access system be accessed?

The sign-in portal is available at tieredaccess.com. This page also includes an explanation of the Tiered Access registration directory and some information about who may be accredited. Over the next few phases, we’ll add an option to apply for access, a link to the applicable Terms and Conditions, and a public Whois lookup option, allowing the page to function as a Whois directory for both the public and gated versions of the service.

Will resellers have access to the Tiered Access system?

We have no plans to provide our reseller partners access to the gated Whois, but, if you’re one of our resellers, this shouldn’t be cause for concern — the data that appear in Tiered Access for any domains in your account are accessible to you through the Domains tab of the Control Panel or the GetContacts API command. Also, keep in mind that with the new domain transfer process, the gaining registrar no longer has to send the initial Form of Authorization to the registrant email address, which has historically been retrieved from the contact details in the public Whois.

Finding a Balance

Much of the debate over the concept of a gated Whois system has focused around finding a balance between protecting individual privacy and ensuring that those using domains to perpetrate malicious activities can be held accountable. A recent Techdirt article described the debate’s central question as, “which is more important for society: protecting millions of people from spammers, scammers and copyright trolls by limiting the publicly-available Whois data, or making it easier for security researchers to track down online criminals by using that same Whois information?” As a registrar, our central concerns are compliance with law and protecting the data we process. However, we also believe that, as far privacy laws permit, those who play an essential role in keeping the Internet safe should have access to the data they require in order to do so. Our Tiered Access system is a solution that accomplishes both objectives.