ICANN - Respect Our Privacy

[Aleks <am@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

since english isn’t my native langauge, i’ll do my best to share this:

I think it’s an essential right to keep peoples privacy, online and offline, 
safe. People online deserve a right to safe their identity from strangers. 
Unless someone is doing something illegal, there’s no need to reveal peoples 
private data (in this case the WHOIS data).

People publish a lot of things online, and while it’s no problem for most 
people, there’re groups of people, especially minorities, that profit from good 
privacy. The internet is a space for people to share their thoughts and passion 
without revealing their identify. Sharing thoughts, could also lead to other 
problems like harrasment, stalking and a few other bad things from people that 
think differently. Just remember the whole Gamergate debacle.

To keep the internet safe for everyone, ICANN should not reveal users WHOIS 
data. As i said, this is especially dangerous for minorities that do nothing 
wrong/illegal but have to fear other conflicts with people finding out their 
addresses.

I’m not against revealing domain owners privacy in case of any lawsuit. If a 
law enforcement agency need domain owners private data, it’s absolutely OK for 
ICANN to hand over the data. But this should not mean that EVERYONE has a right 
to see WHOIS owning the domain.

I hope you keep those problems in mind, and try to keep domain owners data safe.