How to find out who owns a website domain name

Posted on February 12, 2008 at 7:27 am

Wouldn’t it be nice to know who owned certain websites? Whether you want to verify a domain name or see when one expires (so that you can purchase it), the WHO IS database is the way to go. By visiting www.whois.net, you can not only find out who owns a certain domain name, but also when it was purchased and more importantly, when it is due to expire.

Who Is

Looking up a domain name on www.whois.net is very simple. All you have to do is enter in the web address you want to look up and presto – all the information you wanted will appear. For example, if you look up the website address for the WHO IS site, you will find out some important information. In the screen shot below, we can tell that the domain name was purchased in 1997 and they have paid for it through 2016 (so no luck trying to buy it out from under them anytime soon!).

who is registry information

While WHO IS is a great reference for when you want to find information on someone else’s site, unfortunately, there are also a lot of people using this site to find information about you. I recently did an experiment where I purchased two new domain names and set up email accounts for each domain name using the format info@domainname.com. I then let my personal information be displayed on www.whois.net for one of the sites and purchased the security feature for the other site. (Note: The security feature displays a third party’s information instead of your own, like the one for Host Monster shown below.)

Host Monster Who is

The first site, with all of my information displayed to the public, started receiving spam mail within 1 week of posting the information. Then, even when I removed the information a couple weeks later by purchasing the privacy package, I still continued to receive the junk mail (and haven’t figured out how to get rid of it yet!).

The second site, however, has not received any junk mail in its email account. While this could be a coincidence, I would strongly advice using the privacy feature whenever you register a new domain name to reduce the risk of receiving an inbox full of junk mail.

This is a guest post by Karen Worthy, a tech enthusiast.

[tags]Internet, websites, webpages, web pages, domain name, registration name, domain name expiration, www.whois.net, who is, web site privacy, privacy, spam, junk mail, preventing spam, finding domain name owners, domain name owners, registering your domain name[/tags]

» Filed Under Cool Websites

Comments

18 Responses to “How to find out who owns a website domain name”

Carl said on : February 12th, 2008 at 6:47 pm

Even though it says that the domain name might expire soon, most companies have an automatic renewal program and it won’t actually expire.

Nirmal said on : February 18th, 2008 at 7:25 am

Nice information there, its necessary to have domain privacy, other wise spammers will never leave you.

colin graves said on : May 30th, 2008 at 5:01 am

dear team can you tell me with your knowledge how can i find mw websites hosts and not domain name host i already
no that one
regards colin

akishore said on : May 31st, 2008 at 12:33 am

If you want to know the hosting company, you can go to whoishostingthis.com. It will tell you the website host for the site instead of the domain host.

Chris said on : June 13th, 2008 at 9:55 am

Sooo… you use Godaddy.com to host your website, your name is Aseem Kishore, your domain servers are NS1.MEDIATEMPLE.NET and NS2.MEDIATEMPLE.NET, your address is 6348 Pratt Dr. New Orleans, Louisiana 70122 United States, your website expires in 2017, your phone number is (504) 975-8649, and your website is provided “as is”. Cool.

Paul said on : June 24th, 2008 at 9:53 am

How do I search to find the registered owner of the above site as when I do it , it comes back as surpressed? What does that mean ?

gary said on : June 28th, 2008 at 10:49 pm

Domain privacy also is handy if you own a ripoff sites like asknerd and xpmedic!!!!

Euriko said on : July 9th, 2008 at 9:25 am

Hy…
I would like to receive in my e-mail the following answers:
Where is hosted WEBSITE the above?
Who and the person responsible for it?
If an interest, we took it?
Who pays the record and values of others?

Thank You.

Hazel said on : July 11th, 2008 at 6:04 pm

I looked for hosting company for a website that I have done business with but am now unable to contact. The response was “We’re currently not available to provide the result for this query. We apologize for the incovenience.”

What can I do now?

thanks,
Hazel

Shanon said on : August 5th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

I’m trying to find the contact information for a site that is displaying pictures of myself without permission. They have no contact info listed at all. I went on who is.com and found the information is locked aka private. How am I supposed to find contact information and contact them for removal if none is given?? The other site that is doing the same thing gives false email address’s and phone numbers so I cannot contact them either. Any help would be much appreciated.

hurt said on : September 21st, 2008 at 6:03 pm

dear shanon, i wish i came accross this site a month ago.
the same thing is happening to me only i was stalked n the pics were secretly taken.
either way, noone is helping me n this person is getting away sadistly with his harrassment of me.
please reply back, please lets change laws together.
a former member of the fbi has stated that the internet should not have all the privacy it does in certain cases.
i hope someone has helped you,
would u like to join me in addressing this to the senate n courts n congress.
laws must change, too many people r getting away with crimes
on the internet
sincerly,
another girl hurt by the lack of laws governing the internet.

Nick van man said on : November 25th, 2008 at 5:27 am

Hi Great site i have been target by a rival company who did not realise they could be traced, they have done a lot of damage to by business but now i will be able take action

Simon said on : December 10th, 2008 at 2:06 am

Does anyone know if there is a similar site that will give me the same information for Australian sites (.com.au)?
Thanks,
Simon

attacked said on : December 14th, 2008 at 9:23 am

I have a similar problem. Personally attacked and my company as well. I have heard that there are websites that will extract the whois info from private domain registrations for a fee. Does anyone here know the names of any sites that do this?

akishore said on : December 14th, 2008 at 2:47 pm

attacked, even if you find out which companies get information about privately registered domains, it probably won’t help you with the attacks. You need to find out if it’s a rival company, etc and see if you can take action directly.

attacked said on : December 14th, 2008 at 3:45 pm

we have a good idea who the company(s) are/is. I just need to know the name of the name of the person who registered the site. I am finding a ton of articles on sites that can pierce the private registration but none of the articles actually give the name of the sites that do this for a fee. Can anyone refer to me a site(s) that do this work?

akishore said on : December 15th, 2008 at 12:08 am

@attacked – I see what you mean. I did a little searching and found this article on how to defeat private domain registrations and get the information you need. Hopefully, it works for you. Let me know.

http://blog.spoofed.org/2008/0.....ation.html

joe mamma said on : February 19th, 2009 at 3:59 am

I landed here looking for some whois trickery, and found nothing but hilarity in this thread. everyone who posted here ( save posts 4 and 5 ) is likely clinically retarded. don’t you all know the interWEB the interNET and the WWW are different things? There’s your problem right there…