By way of background, the Whois Recommendation explains: "The .. Whois protocol has traditionally been used by the Internet community to identify and provide contact information for the person or organization responsible for many Internet resources, for example, a domain name or an IP address. It has been successfully used in a cooperative manner for situations such as informing a person or organization of inappropriate use of their resource (security), or incorrect configuration of their resource (stability). Whois data is thus important for the security and stability of the Internet as the administration and control of Internet resources is widely distributed."

The specific items called for in the Recommendation are the following:

• The accuracy of Whois data used to provide contact information for the party responsible for an Internet resource must be improved, both at the time of its initial registration and at regular intervals...
• A standard format for Whois data must be developed.
• Whois data must contain a "Last Verified Date" that reflects the last point in time at which the information was known to contain valid data. It must also contain a reference to the data verification process.
• A Whois service that supports searching in the current architecture of distributed indices and separated registry and registrar services must be developed.
• A publicly available list of publicly available Whois servers must be available using a widely known and available resource, e.g., a web page or DNS SRV records.
• Whois services must provide mechanisms to protect the privacy of registrants.
• A Whois service must discourage the harvesting and mining of its data.

The Whois Recommendation recognizes that the publishing of a registrant’s information poses dangers to that person's privacy, as spammers and others can use that data as a source of addresses. In light of this risk, the Recommendation calls for mechanisms to protect registrants’ privacy.

On the flip side, if this information were tightly restricted, civil libertarians might raise concerns over the potential abuse of power, as one centralized body would wield control over the database holding everyone’s contact information.

There is also concern that restricting Whois information would reduce one level of the web's transparency. Website operators could more easily claim to be anyone or anything, with few means of verifying their true identities.