WHOIS is a website that allows you to find out who owns a certain domain name and when it was purchased, as well as when it is due to expire.
Looking up a domain name on www.whois.net is 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 WHOIS site, you will find out some important information about that domain name. In the screen shot below, we can see that the domain name was purchased in 1997 and they have paid for it through 2018 (so no luck trying to buy it out from under them anytime soon!).
When purchasing a domain or even afterwards, most companies provide a private registration benefit that will remove any personal information about the owner. This can be a problem when it’s the other way around, as WHOIS can be a great reference for finding information about someone else’s website but can be a problem when it’s the other way around.
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 Domains By Proxy shown below.) ..
The first site, which made public my personal information, received spam mail within a week of posting the information. Then, even after I removed the information a few weeks later by purchasing the privacy package, I continued to receive junk mail on the original email address. ..
The second site, however, has not received any unsolicited email in its account. While this could be a coincidence, I would strongly advise using the privacy feature whenever you register a new domain name to reduce the risk of receiving an inbox full of unsolicited email. Also, it just keeps your personal information private, which is better since everything and anything is being hacked these days. ..
DomainTools provides a WHOIS lookup that is more comprehensive than the WHOIS of WHOIS.NET.
Domain data is a valuable resource that can help you understand a site’s performance and potential competition. By subscribing to Domain Data, you gain access to all of the data that the company offers, including server type, SEO score, HTTP response code, hosting history, registrar history, and more. This information can be helpful in understanding how a site is performing and whether it could be improved.
