Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) Extension for Verified Contact Information

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

The Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) provides access to registration data for domain names, IP addresses, and autonomous system numbers. However, RDAP responses do not currently include explicit information about whether contact information such as email addresses or phone numbers has been verified.¶

This document defines a simple extension that enables RDAP providers to include verification status for contact fields. This is useful in contexts where contact verification may be legally required or strongly recommended.¶

In particular, Article 28 of Directive (EU) 2022/2555 ([NIS2]) requires top-level domain (TLD) name registries and domain name registrars to collect and maintain accurate and complete domain name registration data. It also mandates them to verify, to the extent possible, the accuracy of such data. The extension defined in this document can support compliance with this obligation by enabling the inclusion of verification status for contact fields in RDAP responses.¶

2. Conventions Used in This Document

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶

3. RDAP Conformance

Servers implementing this extension MUST include the string "verifiedContacts" in the "rdapConformance" ([RFC9083]) array of all relevant RDAP responses. The registration of the "verifiedContacts" extension identifier is described in Section 6.¶

4. JSON Structure

The verification information is conveyed via a new top-level object member named "verifiedContacts_data" within the entity objects.¶

      {
        "objectClassName": "entity",
        "handle": "ABC123-EXAMPLE",
        "rdapConformance": ["rdap_level_0", "verifiedContacts"],
        ...
        "verifiedContacts_data": {
          "email": {
            "verificationDate": "2025-03-15T12:00:00Z",
            "method": "email-verification"
          }
          ...
        }
      }

5. verifiedContacts_data Structure

The "verifiedContacts_data" member is an object whose keys are contact details (e.g., "email", "phone", "address"). Each value is an object containing:¶

1. verificationDate: A required string with the date and time of verification.¶
2. method: An optional string indicating the verification method (e.g., "email-verification", "sms-token", "manual-review", "eid-validation").¶

Instead of returning an object for each verified contact detail, a server MAY use the "all" key to signal that all data has been verified.¶

6. IANA Considerations

IANA is requested to register the following value in the RDAP Extensions Registry:¶

Extension identifier:

verifiedContacts¶

Registry operator:

Any¶

Published specification:

This document.¶

Contact:

IETF <iesg@ietf.org>¶

Intended usage:

This extension identifies RDAP extension for verified contact information.¶

7. Security Considerations

Contact verification data may have privacy implications. Servers MUST ensure that disclosure of this information complies with applicable data protection laws and policies.¶

Authors' Addresses