GDPR and ISNIC's Whois service

[P.s. this was deployed on April 23th.].

To comply with the European GDPR Directive, ISNIC will, before May 25th, stop publishing names, addresses and telephone numbers of personal contacts by default  from the ISNIC WHOIS database. 

Customers (individuals) who wish to continue to publish their information, must log in, go to "My Settings" and select "Name and Address Published". 

ISNIC will however, at least for the time being, continue to publish email addresses, country  and techincal information of all NIC-handles associated with .is domains.  Those customers (individuals) who have recorded a personally identifiable email address, and do not want it published, will need to change their .is WHOIS email address to something impersonal.

Assuming that GDPR directive applies fully to the "WHOIS" service provided for decades by most ccTLD registries, these new restrictions will lead to less transparency in domain registrations and less trust in the domain registration system in general. ISNIC, as many others, strongly disagrees with the view of the European parliament in this matter and warns that GDPR, as it is being implemented, will neither lead to better privacy nor a safer network environment.

For the sake of the internet community, e.g. Individual users, Service Providers, Hosting Companies, and many other stake holders, ISNIC will continue to publish email addresses and the country name of all contact types until further notice.