What is a WHOIS Search
From MDSupportWiki
A Whois search gives you all the domain name registration information you need, including the registrant (or the person/entity who registered the domain), their contact details, who they registered the domain with, and their nameservers.
ID Protect
MD offers an ID Protect service that hides information such as your address, email and phone number from Whois queries. It is great for protecting your privacy, but only works on .com/.net/.info/.biz/.org domains.
An .au based WHOIS Query
Lets do a Whois query on mdwebhosting.com.au, and see what we find out.
Domain Name: mdwebhosting.com.au Last Modified: 12-Dec-2006 00:11:15 UTC Registrar ID: R00045-AR Registrar Name: Distribute.IT Status: OK Registrant: MD Web Hosting Pty. Ltd. Registrant ID: ABN 41109613194 Eligibility Type: Company Registrant ROID: C2704792-AR Registrant Contact Name: Domains Manager Registrant Email: xxx@mdwebhosting.com.au Tech ID: C2704792-AR Tech Name: Domains Manager Tech Email: xxx@mdwebhosting.com.au Name Server: ns1.directserverlink.com Name Server: ns2.directserverlink.com Name Server: ns3.directserverlink.com
You can check out our ABN, who we registered the domain with initially, as well as our official registrant email.
What about a Whois query for a .com domain? Let's check out Google's details!
Registrant: Google Inc. (DOM-258879) Please contact xxx@google.com 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View CA 94043 US
Domain Name: google.com Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com Registrar Whois: whois.markmonitor.com Registrar Homepage: http://www.markmonitor.com Administrative Contact: [Lots of info here] ... Technical Contact, Zone Contact: [Lots of info here] ... Created on..............: 1997-Sep-15. Expires on..............: 2011-Sep-14. Record last updated on..: 2006-Dec-29 14:38:40. Domain servers in listed order: NS3.GOOGLE.COM NS4.GOOGLE.COM NS1.GOOGLE.COM NS2.GOOGLE.COM
Can you see how a .com Whois is more probing? You can get a company's phone number and physical address! Although big companies wouldn't mind, a smaller business or individual operator might want to keep this information a bit more private.
Still, you should make sure that your Whois information is kept up to date. In case you hit any snags down the track, incorrect information can complicate matters.
