ICANN have announced that they are going to reveal to New gTLD applicants whether or not their data has been compromised. This comes after a glitch in the TLD Application System (TAS) allowed some users to see certain details relating to other applicants, specifically filenames and usernames. It seems that the data leak was minimal as ICANN stated that only “certain scenarios” caused the issue to occur. ICANN have been keeping applicants up to date on the progress of TAS via a series of FAQs on their website.
The system was taken down on the 12th April and has yet to come back online. ICANN have reinforced their desire to keep all applicants data secure and have used the downtime to not only fix this specific issue but also make technical improvements to the TLD application system to reduce load times for applicants using the system. ICANN have spent a long time collating all the data entered by applicants and identifying when and where data could have been seen by other applicants.
They have now set a date, May 8th, to inform applicants of any data breaches. This means that applicants will be given details as to what information has been visible by other applicants and when the data could have been seen. However they will not disclose which other applicants may have seen this information. Presumably because there is no guarantee the applicants have seen it, simply that the potential was there. ICANN have reinforced their statement that the vast majority of applicants were not affected by the glitch.
ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom has also taken the time to say that the number of organisations registering to the application system was higher than expected. Many reported the final figure as 839, but Beckstrom has stated the final figure is 1,268. Each applicant can apply for up to 50 New TLDs. This gives a huge number of possibilities for New gTLDs. New domain name extensions give internet users the potential to experience a more useful, categorised internet. This development in the Internet is just as exciting for end users as it is for domain name resellers. You can become a domain reseller with a free account from Domainbox.com. We are an ICANN accredited registrar and hope to offer any New gTLDs as soon as they are made available.