Hostmaster has disabled its Whois service in Ukraine in compliance with the Law on Personal Data Protection.

Hostmaster LLC, the technical administrator of the .UA domain, closed public access to the WHOIS service, which provides information about individuals who registered the domain name.

At the seventh congress of the Internet Association of Ukraine (IAU) on Friday, domain administrator Dmitry Kokhmanyuk spoke. He stated that this decision was made in accordance with the law "On the Protection of Personal Data," which came into force this year. According to this law, transferring personal data to third parties without the consent of individuals is prohibited.

Internet Invest LLC President Oleksandr Olshansky stated that Ukraine is the only country in the world where domain information is confidential. He also stated that Ukrainian domain registrars have sent a request to the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice for clarification on whether the law's provisions apply to the global WHOIS service, but have not yet received a response.

In response, Vladimir Kozak, Deputy Head of the State Service for Personal Data Protection, stated that there was no need to rush the shutdown. He argued that if the service operates globally, no one would be penalized for it. Alexey Mervinsky, Head of the State Service, assured congress participants that the law had been reviewed by the Council of Europe and "contains nothing supernatural."