New Canadian Privacy Policy

[mhardgrove]

The group that oversees Canada’s dot-ca registry introduced a new privacy policy this week in an attempt to balance the rights of domain name registrants with those of trademark holders.

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) said that under the new policy, formally enacted on Tuesday, the personal information of individual domain name registrants, including registrant name, home address, phone number and e-mail address, would now automatically be protected. Corporate registrants will remain public.

Individuals, as opposed to businesses, own about 60 per cent of all of the dot-ca domain names in Canada. The personal information of these owners was previously available through an internet search called Whois (pronounced who-is).

The new privacy rules restricts how private-sector organizations collect, use and disclose personal information in the course of commercial business; this would put it in line with the 2004 Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA)


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[Len]

I think that your whois information should automatically be protected by every registrar with the option of you having those details available for all to see. It is unbelieveable that in spite of all the privacy laws in place that you have to pay for privacy protection. The CIRA are way ahead of the game on this and should be applauded for their foresight.
I do not use the whois protection as I personally want others to be able to contact me through my whois details if necessary, especially potential buyers. However, as I previously stated the protection should be mandatory and it should be an option to have it removed.

 

[Hurley4540]

This is great for free privacy for .ca.....but this needs to happen for all domains.....

 

[mhardgrove]

Yeah I definitely don't understand how you have to pay a *premium* for privacy. People don't pay premiums for their phones to be unlisted in the phone book. Same concept - should be choice without price.

I had a website - well still have it - 360defenseforce. It is kind of a dig on the sonydefenseforce site just blatant one sided news in favor of 360. I googled my name one day and found that on a sony forum people found the site, looked up the whois, google mapped my house, and were saying someone should go egg and toilet my house.

I mean it turned out to be idle threats and also the website isn't popular enough but, there are definitely some domains I would perhaps want to keep private - without having to pay the fee.

 

[mis_chiff]

Yeah I definitely don't understand how you have to pay a *premium* for privacy. People don't pay premiums for their phones to be unlisted in the phone book.

Did that change? There used to be a fee to
have your number private/unlisted.

It's great how we can turn the privacy on
or off in seconds, and the update to the whois
system is almost as quick