ICANN admitted last week that it released personal information of applicants when it posted documents on the public portion of its website. ICANN said that postal addresses of contacts for gTLD application were published as part of the application details – information that was supposed to be confidential.
In response, the organization temporarily disabled viewing of the applications, removed the confidential information from the files, and restored public viewing of the applications.
The disclosure came a day after ICANN announced that it had received 1,930 new gTLD applications. Current gTLD suffixes include .com, .org, .gov, and .edu.
In April, ICANN suspended the application process because a software glitch might have disclosed confidential information on applicants to other applicants. After the reviewing the glitch, ICANN confirmed that confidential information was disclosed but found no evidence that any applicant “intentionally did anything wrong in order to be able to see other users’ information.” The organization resumed accepting applications in May following the review.