As of 25 May 2018, personal data can no longer be shown in order to protect the privacy of individuals. This is what is prescribed by the GDPR, the legislation regarding the privacy of citizens. As the administrator of the database of all .be, .vlaanderen and .brussels registrants, DNS Belgium has been mindful of the privacy of these registrants for many years. The GDPR has changed nothing on that front. What changes today because of the GDPR, however, is the WHOIS tool , which you can use to request data of registrants.
Here’s an overview of the changes:
- Changes for private .be domain names
Because the privacy of some 700,000 registrants has been high on our agenda of DNS Belgium long before the GDPR, it has drawn a distinction from the outset of its activities in 2000 between private registrations and registrations in the name of a legal entity. The data of private registrants (name, address and telephone number) have been protected for a number of years already. Only the e-mail address and selected languages were still visible. As of today, the latter data will no longer be shown either. We will no longer show personal data in any way.
- Changes for .be domain names in the name of a legal person
Furthermore, we are making extra efforts to protect the data of organizations and companies. The data of organizations are shown during a WHOIS search, with the exception of the name field, which will no longer be shown in the search results as of the today. The other contact details such as address and e-mail address will remain visible.
We provide an identical regulation for .vlaanderen and .brussels domain names for the time being.
- It is still possible to contact private registrants
To enable everyone to contact a private domain name holder, we provide a contact form on the website. The applicant must enter his contact details and indicate the reason for the contact request. Once the applicant has confirmed his e-mail address, an automatic e-mail is sent to the registrant of the domain name, with the contact details of the person who is trying to get in touch with him.
