Following the recent discovery of vulnerabilities in the WHOIS system, WHOIS-based domain validation via email addresses is no longer considered a secure method for verifying domain ownership. The CA\/Browser Forum (CABF) is set to pass a ballot that will make WHOIS-listed email addresses unacceptable for domain validation.<\/p>\n
Effective dates differ per Certificate Authority (CA):<\/strong><\/p>\n June 15, 2025<\/strong> – Sectigo will no longer support WHOIS-based email DCV and will invalidate any pre-existing DCV records. This means no certificates can be issued or re-issued using WHOIS email domain validation.<\/p>\n May 8, 2025<\/strong> – DigiCert will no longer accept automated WHOIS-based domain validations referrals for new domain validations. It will, however, still accept WHOIS protocol-based DCV and finally, in July 2025<\/strong>,- DigiCert will no longer allow the reuse of existing WHOIS-based domain validations of any kind, regardless of the time left in a reuse period.<\/p>\n If a method other than WHOIS web-based lookups was used to validate your domain\u2014 for example, DNS TXT records, file validation, or pre-constructed email (e.g., administrator@domain.com) verification \u2014 then this has no impact on you or your certificates.<\/p>\n If you used a WHOIS-listed email address to validate your domain when getting an SSL Certificate, you\u2019ll need to change validation methods when requesting a new certificate. This is true even for customers who are within the allowed prior reuse period.<\/p>\n The easiest method for most customers will be to use one of the pre-constructed or pre-approved validation email addresses:<\/p>\n Alternative methods of domain control validation include file and DNS-based validation methods:<\/p>\n To find further information on alternative DCV methods, you can explore our other KnowledgeBase articles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Following the recent discovery of vulnerabilities in the WHOIS system, WHOIS-based domain validation via email addresses is no longer considered a secure method for verifying domain ownership. The CA\/Browser Forum (CABF) is set to pass a ballot that will make WHOIS-listed email addresses unacceptable for domain validation. Effective dates differ…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"ht-kb-category":[25],"ht-kb-tag":[],"class_list":["post-4065","ht_kb","type-ht_kb","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","ht_kb_category-ssl-validation"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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