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Data about site owners, still inaccessible. Here is what ITCSS representatives say

11 August 2020
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Information about individuals or legal entities that own .md domains remains inaccessible to the general public even a year after the state company MoldData promised that access would be restored “in the near future.” The Information Technology and Cyber Security Service (ITCSS) claims, in a response to Media Azi, that it is taking measures to make those data public again.

The letter signed by the ITCSS Director Serghei Popovici says that the institution “has initiated the necessary measures to make public the data of legal entities holding domain names.”

A year ago, the representatives of the former national registrar of the .md domain MoldData (reorganized and absorbed by ITCSS) promised to provide full access to the data of legal entities that own domains managed by them “in the near future,” but it never happened.

Previously, information about .md domain owners – name, address, contact details – could be viewed through the WHOIS service, restricted once the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) entered into force. “The adaptation of the company’s internal procedures was necessary because the owners of the .md domains are both individuals from the Republic of Moldova and from abroad, including from the territory of the European Union. Under these conditions, through the WHOIS service, the public has access to information on the country of origin, the date of creation and expiry of the domain name, its status and the servers to which it is addressed,” MoldData mentioned in September 2019 in an official response for Media Azi.

However, experts have contradicted the institution: GDPR has not been transposed into national law, and even if this were to happen, the Regulation does not prohibit the publication of such data.