Norid will today activate a reCAPTCHA on the whois-search through www.norid.no (http://www.norid.no/domenenavnbaser/whois/index.en.php). This will be more cumbersome for Norid's customers and users, and we apologise for that.

We have observed activity we define as abuse, and this solution is necessary to prevent this. We apologise for the short notice.

The chosen solution allows up to 10 inquiries per session before a new captcha must be solved. We assume that this will cover the need of normal users who are looking for information about a contact person or holder of a domain.

For registrars making inquiries in Norid's whois-search from their own systems, this will be too cumbersome. We have therefore set up a separate registrar address for the whois-search. The address has been sent by email to all registrars.

This address is not protected with captcha, and works exactly like today's search in whois. The address should NOT be listed on public web pages, or be used in any way that is visible from the outside. Registrars who have whois search against www.norid.no from their own webpages, must do this in a way that does not show this URL.

We know that this does not provide a strong protection, but we must balance the need for protection against the registrar's need for unobstructed access to whois.

Whois is still available through port 43 on whois.norid.no as before. A whois dump of all objects connected to a registrar, can still be found on the registrar web. It is updated every night.

We would like to remind you that abuse of the whois service is not allowed. An example of abuse is attempts to collect the whole or parts of Norid's database. If we discover that registrars are behind this kind of abuse, it is reason for termination of the registrar agreement.

In 2014 we plan a more long-term solution for whois which will use a restriction based on rate for the registrars, with access limitation based on IP-filters. We will have a dialog with the registrars first, in order to identify their needs when it comes to the whois-service.

Published: 1 November 2013
Updated: 28 May 2014