While the rules outlined in GDPR apply only to EU-local individuals, changes to how data is collected and handled will happen on a global scale as companies modify their existing practices to ensure they are compliant with these new regulations. While we will try our best to minimize any disruption to our domain management and registration processes for registrants, Tucows believes in the principles that the GDPR upholds, and we, along with other key players in our industry, feel that extending the benefits of the GDPR to registrants worldwide is simply the right thing to do.

What it means is that all these regulations around protecting personal information can’t just be afterthoughts, they need to be part of the system that’s on unless you turn it off. We’ll be empowering registrants to understand what information we hold and how it’s used, to give consent to us for that use, and to request erasure of data in cases where consent cannot be provided.