One fundamental aspect of domain name registration that many people are unfamiliar with is the Whois database. The Whois database is essentially the publicly accessible location where the registration information associated with each and every registered domain name is stored. In order to register a domain name, you (the Registrant) are required to provide a certain amount of personal contact information within the registration process. This information includes your name, your physical address, phone-number, and email address of the contacts associated with your domain. All this information is stored in the publicly accessible Whois database.

To understand the reasons why a Whois database exists, lets look at the history of the Domain Name System (DNS). The DNS originated in the early 1980′s as a system to assist Internet operators with identifying network resources on the Internet by associating the hard to remember IP addresses (i.e. 204.174.223.49) assigned to a computer or network, with easy to remember “Domain” names such as domainpeople.com. Part of the DNS included a “Whois” protocol which associated a series of contact information with a given domain name to assist Internet operators in identifying and contacting other Internet operators that maintained the operations of a network resource on the Internet. The first domain name registered and still active on the Internet was symbolics.com, registered on March 15th, 1985.

The WHOIS protocol has since evolved into a free online service used as a tool for many purposes including checking to verify that a domain name is available for registration, investigating trademark infringements by identifying and contacting the Registrant associated with a domain name, verifying the identities of online merchants to ensure secure financial transactions on the Internet, and tracking the registrant of a domain name that has been used for malicious and/or unlawful activities.

Remember I described the Whois Database as being “publicly accessible”, this means that anyone with an Internet connection can obtain the contact information associated with a domain name registration. This unfortunately enables various misuses of the Whois Database that can lead to annoying if not dangerous outcomes. ICANN (the organization responsible for the management of the DNS) requires all accredited registrars to provide free public access to a web based Whois interface and a standardized TCP port 43 Whois server. Anyone with basic programming skills or access to Whois data parsing software can start collecting and storing the personal contact information associated with registered domain names. Although the use of such automated data mining processes are not allowed according to the standard Whois report disclaimer, there is no system in place to prevent anyone from running such processes. Some of the negative results associated with these types of Whois data mining activities include, email spam, phishing scams, fraud, and identity theft.

Registrars have employed various tactics to limit the success of automated Whois data mining over the years. Common techniques are presenting a “Captcha” image on a web based Whois form, and another is to enforce a maximum number of Whois queries per hour on a Whois server. Unfortunately, neither of these are foolproof. The most reliable method to secure your personal contact information from being harvested through Whois data mining is to use a preventative approach such as a proxy Whois service. Proxy Whois is an additional service that masks personal contact information in the Whois database for a domain name registration. This essentially puts you in control of how your personal contact information is used in the registration process by enabling your contact details to be represented in the public Whois database by a set of proxy contacts that are maintained by the company that provides the service. A reputable proxy Whois provider will include a legal agreement that will protect your interests, ensuring you maintain full legal ownership of the domain registration, and will also obligate the provider to forward any legitimate communications received on your behalf to you.

There is plenty of discussion related to the current state of the Whois protocol which has existed relatively unchanged for over 25 years. Complaints and concerns claiming the current Whois system is antiquated and deficient are increasing. Questions of data accuracy and reliability, accessibility and readability are issues that ICANN has been attempting to address for over 10 years. Some progress has been made in the form of Whois data accuracy, and prohibitions to bulk Whois data distribution, but there’s still a great deal of policy development remaining that relies on community consensus before we’ll see any tangible changes to the old Whois.