When you cut through the PR and look at the details the EU actually has quite a bad track record on both technology issues and authoritarian government, so sadl

When you cut through the PR and look at the details the EU actually has quite a bad track record on both technology issues and authoritarian government, so sadly this kind of proposal isn't much of a surprise. But I'm 100% with you on this. I still get phishing emails to an address I set up last century exclusively as a contact point when I managed some domains for a local community group. I haven't been involved with that group for more than a decade. Every year we get deceptive postal mail to our business address, which is the contact address for the registration of our domains at work, trying to get us to sign up for one con or another involving domain renewal "checks", "registration with search engines", and so on. These almost always arrive in the time leading up to the anniversary of registration, even in the years when we don't need to renew because we previously paid for multiple years. Cutting the personal details out of WHOIS was a simple, positive step to improve online privacy even just for everyday users who don't want to be subject to harassment and deception.