Still shielding home addresses in Kadaster to prevent threats

ANP

NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 19:40

Private addresses in the Land Registry will be better protected. The cabinet has promised this, after a request from D66. The government party also wants this public register to be closed, to prevent home addresses from falling into the wrong hands and people being easily threatened or intimidated at their home.

The cabinet wants to take a tougher approach to threats and intimidation, which is why it is a criminal offense to distribute someone’s address online with the aim of intimidating, known as doxing.

But addresses of someone who owns a house are still easy to trace via the Land Registry. A large majority in parliament finds this a strange state of affairs. “We must ensure that malicious parties are less able to obtain address details from, for example, judges, lawyers, journalists and scientists,” said D66 MP Sneller today in a parliamentary debate on doxing.

Brokers

Initially, the cabinet was not enthusiastic about shielding the Kadaster, because important information about the value of immovable property is available to parties involved in the housing market, such as brokers.

But Minister De Jonge for Housing and Spatial Planning, who is responsible for the Land Registry, has dropped his objections. “He will get to work with it, provided it is not too much at the expense of the public information that is necessary for real estate, for example,” reported Minister Yeşilgöz of Justice and Security. “That is good news.” The elaboration of the shielding of the home addresses will follow.

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