[gnso-rds-pdp-wg] Documented case of individual being doxxed as a result of WHOIS

[Ayden Férdeline]

Hi, all-
[According to this series of tweets](https://twitter.com/japna_p/status/919079163780198400) on Twitter, earlier this week the website Feminism in India "published an article criticising Hindu festivals & how they are misogynist for women". They advise that "some troll ran a http://whois.com check on FII's domain and found [the domain name registrant's] name, home add & mobile no. This started a barrage of Islamophobic tweets & an innocent person suffering & being doxxed. Horrible horrible situation." They were not aware that this data was public.

This, sadly, is another example of the existing WHOIS protocol being used to shame, anger, or scare an individual with the objective of suppressing speech. As we work on fleshing out definitions of purposes this week, I thought it was important to share this story, because it shows very clearly the implications of personally identifiable information being misused with the objective of causing emotional, and/or physical harm.

Many thanks,

Ayden Férdeline
[linkedin.com/in/ferdeline](http://www.linkedin.com/in/ferdeline)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/gnso-rds-pdp-wg/attachments/20171014/71baa10e/attachment.html>