Tucows withdraws from ICANN domain name owner query system, RDRS faces severe test

Recently, Canadian domain name registrar Tucows announced its withdrawal from ICANN's Registration Data Request Service (RDRS). This decision casts a shadow on the future development of RDRS and has also attracted widespread attention in the domain name industry.

RDRS is the successor to WHOIS launched by ICANN in response to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

After the implementation of GDPR, domain name registrars need to delete personal data disclosed in the WHOIS directory, but law enforcement agencies and others still need to access non-public data.

To this end, ICANN launched RDRS, which handles non-public gTLD registration data requests through a free ticketing system, connecting requesters with accredited registrars. However, ICANN does not store data, and the final decision on whether to provide data is made by the registrar in accordance with data protection laws.

But RDRS faces many problems. Its participation is completely voluntary, and the workload is large, which is not attractive to registrars.

According to the ICANN report in March 2025, only 87 registrars out of about 2,500 accredited companies participated, which left cybercriminals with an opportunity to take advantage.

Tucows manages about 10 million generic ending domain names and has participated in the RDRS pilot. However, "misleading disclosure requests" clogged the queue and distorted the data, seriously affecting system availability and customer experience, and there are data privacy risks, which made Tucows finally choose to withdraw.

After withdrawing, users can submit inquiries through Tucows' TACO service, but they need to pay a 500 Canadian dollar account setup fee and 250 Canadian dollars per month (including five queries), which is usually free for one-time and non-commercial requesters.

Tucows' withdrawal has exacerbated the RDRS dilemma. In March 2025, the number of RDRS requests fell to a record low of 91, of which only 23 were successful and 51 were rejected. It is not yet known whether ICANN will maintain the two-year testing phase of RDRS, and its future is full of uncertainty.