Whois is like the phone book of the internet. Every domain on the web has contact details listed for the site owner within the Whois database. Some of the details listed include: - Full name - Phone number - Email address - Mailing address In short, everything you need to contact a site owner is found in Whois.
According to ICANN, the nonprofit organization in charge of managing domain names, everyone is required to enter various contact details when registering a new domain. ICANN sets the rules for domain ownership, and they have top-down authority on every domain registrar out there. There are three primary reasons why ICANN requires contact details to be added to domain registrations.
The first reason for this information is to verify ownership of the various sites on the web. This is similar to how businesses are required to supply owner contact details when applying for a business license. By having this ownership information out in the open, users and customers are able to check the overall trustworthiness of a site. This data can be used to check for conflicts of interest and reliability of a site owner. An example of this would be checking a nutrition website's ownership to see if it's managed by a fast food company. While many users may not take advantage of this, it allows journalists and others in professional fields to gather reliable data.
The second reason this information is available is to make it possible for businesses to protect their intellectual property. If a website is using unauthorized trademarks or copyrighted information, it's important that the trademark owners can contact the site and take legal action if needed.
Finally, this information allows people to buy and sell domain names easily. Potential buyers can look up the domain name in Whois and make an offer via email or snail mail.
Whois can be checked in a few different ways. The ICANN itself provides a Whois service for the public - anyone can type in any domain name on their website and get the information for free. This is useful if you only need to look up a single domain name in Whois. A Whois database download is another option for these large operations. By getting the entire Whois database in a download, users can quickly and easily search the data, even while offline.
Overall, the Whois service has lots of applications in business and consumer security. ICANN moderates all domain name registrations and allows this valuable service to continue to exist. Many tools are also available to assist users in checking Whois.
