DomainTools Sued for Misusing New Zealand’s .NZ Domain Name Registration Information

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DomainTools Sued for Misusing New Zealand’s .NZ Domain Name Registration Information

By CircleID Reporter
July 12, 2018, 6:54 pm PDT Views: 12,406 Add Comment

Domain Name Commission Limited (“DNCL”), New Zealand’s overseer for the country’s .NZ domain, has filed a lawsuit against the domain name service company DomainTools. According to the filing, DNCL states that “DomainTools’s activities undermine the protections that DNCL promises to provide to .nz registrants and violate the TOU governing use of the .nz WHOIS service.” It continues: “The products and services that DomainTools offers to its customers are built on practices that infringe .nz registrants’ privacy rights and expectations by harvesting their registration information in bulk from the registry where it is maintained; using high-volume queries and technical measures designed to evade the restrictions that protect .nz WHOIS servers against that form of abuse; and storing and retaining registrant data, including detailed personal contact information, even after the registrant has chosen to withhold their data from the registry. These activities cause irreparable harm to DNCL’s reputation and integrity, divert resources from DNCL’s mission, interfere with its contractual relationships with .nz domain name registrars, and harm the goodwill DNCL receives from individual registrants of .nz domain names.”

By CircleID Reporter

CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.

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