Domain registrars can never issue a domain name to the public before getting the authority of the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). A registrant is an entity entrusted with a domain name and who the registrars consider authorized to make changes to any vital information regarding the particular domain name. It’s for this reason that a registrant has to be known so as to assist the authorities involved to understand the individual with the billing, administrative, and technical rights linked to a particular domain name.
Reasons why it’s important to determine a domain name’s owner/registrant
- It’s only through this process that a lookup can verify that all your personal details are filled correctly. This way, you do not need to worry much about missing out on vital information and news such as purchase offers, renewal notices, partnership request, etc.
- A lookup uses your verified information to determine whether your set privacy controls are functioning properly. This is especially crucial when you’re trying to protect your online personal information.
- The information provided during registration is required by prospective buyers of a particular domain to help them contact the respective owners. As such, the lookup has to verify that several kinds of information such as the mailing address, owners’ name, their email address, and telephone numbers are correct.
How To Look Up For Domain Name Details
Registering a domain name is meant to be an incredibly transparent process. As such, anyone can have access to your personal details as the domain name registrant by just clicking a few informative links. This way, they can keep track of your domain’s expiry date or even the start of registration.
The WHOIS Lookup
This is perhaps the easiest and most popular route in which anyone can look up for a particular domain name’s details. The resource offers you several lead details such as the registrant’s personal details, their billing contact, domain’s original date of registration and expiry dates, administrative contact, and technical contact.
Need to look up a domain name’s owner information? Here are three simple steps to follow:
- The first landing point is on sites such as whois.com or popular web solutions providers such as GoDaddy.
- While there, search the particular website by typing their URL or domain name in full.
- With a click or two, you will be granted access to the personal details you’re probably are looking for.
A WHOIS Example
Now, here is a practical illustration of how to determine who owns a domain name. We will take the example of www.newcoupon.net as an example website and let us explore as who owns this domain.
Step 1: Begin the WHOIS lookup
Visit a WHOIS lookup service. You can use www.whois.net or, in our case, www.tucowsdomains.com and “Enter Domain Name for WHOIS Lookup”:
Step 2: Perform the CAPTCHA entry
Step 3: The privacy paragraph
How To Verify The Details
In some cases, you might want to verify whether the details fetched using the above procedure are indeed legit. For example, it’s not uncommon to find incomplete details of the registrant during a search. When faced with such a case, just visit the registrar’s website and see whether you can find more information. Let’s have a look at the following WHOIS domain search example.
Say you want to know the owner of a www.netcoupon.net for example. There are two possibilities to expect. One, you may find the complete set of the registrant’s details ranging from the names and their personal contact information. On the other hand, you might find it difficult to unearth such details especially if the owner has sought a domain name privacy protection service.
Due to the increased cases of spammers and misuse of personal information by hackers, a majority of domain registrants are opting to keep their personal, sensitive information away from the reach of the public domain. This reduces cases of privacy intrusion especially if you’re the kind that hates receiving emails from unknown sources. As such, most domain registrars now offer a privacy protection service for this purpose. This way, third parties cannot access your personal information easily as it is masked. The registrar can only present such information to a third party when requested and when certain set rules and regulations have been honored.
Conclusion
There are numerous reasons why domain name registrars make their registrants’ information available for public viewing. This, therefore, means that anyone can look up with sites such as WHOIS and other website solutions providers to determine the rightful owners of a specific domain name. Using this information, they can also help to establish vital details of the domain name such as its age and expiration date. Of course, this could be of help to those looking to purchase those domains.
Fortunately for owners, it’s possible to hide such critical information from the public using a domain name privacy service.
