by MTHULISI SIBANDA
JOHANNESBURG – ZA Central Registry (ZACR), the administrator of the South African domain name (.za), has welcomed the European Union’s (EU’s) General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), that are effective immediately, and the country’s upcoming Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act.
The latter reportedly comes to effect before the end of the year.
The purpose of both local and international data protections laws and/or regulations is aimed at governing the way in which personal information of natural and/or juristic persons is collected, processed and stored by organisations.
Lucky Masilela, the ZACR Chief Executive Officer, said in a digitally connected world the misuse of personal data had the potential to cause significant harm to individuals and other legal entities.
“The ZACR therefore wholeheartedly supports the objectives of both the EU’s data protection regulations and South Africa’s very own POPI,” he said.
ZACR, Masilela said, was working towards implementing a masking functionality for all its Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP)-based domain name registrations by no later than 5 June 2018 as an interim measure.
As a registry operator for four .za second level domains Names [co.za; net.za; web.za and org.za] and four generic top-level domains (capetown/.durban/.joburg/.africa], ZACR processes personal data from .ZA-accredited and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers-accredited registrars and/or directly from end users.
– CAJ News