Or: Reasons why Whois IP requests may have lost importance
The Whois Directory is the "land register" for domains. All the contact details of the domain holders are stored there. Until the beginning of 2018, Whois data was publicly accessible. For data protection reasons, many registries have decided not to publish the owner data from this key date on. In the case of justified requests by e.g. authorities, the owner data is still communicated today. Unfortunately there is currently no uniform procedure for Whois data.
Almost all website operators now use the "Whois Domain Privacy" settings of their hoster. If you activate Whois Domain Privacy for your domain, anonymous data will be entered in the Whois directory. You remain the owner of your domain, but anonymous owner data is stored in the Whois directory. Inquiries about your domain will be forwarded to a secure contact form.