Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Whois

What should I do about my lost domain name?

doubtless — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:26:23 -0800

So I lost my domain name. Now what? For a few years, I had a personal blog. Then the super cheap hosting service I used (Vizaweb) suddenly vanished, charging my credit card one more time before becoming a eerie and apparently deserted spam-trap.

My blog disappeared, but the domain continued to be registered to Vizaweb (I hadn't registered it in my own name).

So, I watched patiently over the course of a few months, as the name expired and went into pending deletion, thinking I'd buy it when it came up again. I figured that my very low traffic blog address (not a name that seems very marketable, either) wouldn't be worth anyone's effort to steal.

However today the name apparently became available and someone managed to buy it before I could register it again. Now it is owned by "c/o eNom, Inc. on behalf of eNom, Inc. Customer." It also says, "Expiration Date: 19-nov-2010." I've already visited the site on line (which perhaps was a bad idea?). It's now just a spamy set of links to hotels, ring tones, etc.

So, as I see it, I have 4 options:
1) wait till the name expires next year, then buy it.
2) email the owner and ask to buy it
3) buy the .net version and use that
4) forget about the old domain entirely

However, there are problems with each option:
1) they might renew it
2) he will probably ask a huge price for it, and I'm poor. I'm also not sure if, on principle, I'd want to pay more than maybe $50 to this domain name squatter
3) this would be ok, but .com is better known, and would probably encourage the new owner to renew the domain next year and/or to charge more for it if I ask him to sell it
4) this will really annoy me, as the name has some personal importance. But it is an option.

Anyway, I know that there's no great solution here, but I guess I'd be interested in what you'd recommend. (As a secondary question, how could I have avoided this? How could I have reserved the name that was held by my defunct hosting company?)

Thanks for any advice.

When registering a domain name, should I pay - annually - to hide these details from the Whois database?

Kirn — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 05:16:22 -0800

When registering a domain name, should I pay - annually - to hide these details from the Whois database? I'm in the process of registering 2 domain names (with fasthosts.co.uk/ukreg) and have been presented with the following option:

Hide your contact details for this domain
£4.99 pa per domain
Activate domain privacy to stop these contact details being displayed in the publically-accessible WhoIs database.

£10/year isn't a massive amount of money, but it isn't nothing. Should I tick this option? Do people, generally? Do you? What am I getting by doing it, and what am I risking if I don't? Is there a serious risk of identity fraud? (FWIW, the domain names I'm registering would both have my full name in them.)

Thanks!

How to grab a soon-to-expire domain name?

bdk3clash — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 10:21:14 -0800

What is the best way to snag a soon-to-expire domain name? [myname].com is registered by a company. It currently redirects to that company's web page (a different domain name.) It was registered in 2000, and the registration is set to expire this year.

I've e-mailed the registrant but have not received a response. What would be the best way to go about snagging this domain?

WHOIS that? It's nobody...

Don-da-lah — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 09:14:49 -0800

I recently registered a .co.uk domain name. I've since found out that my full name is visible on a WHOIS. What can I do to hide it? I've contacted Nominet (the registrar for all .uk names) and they've said that it is possible to change the name by registering it to someone else, but I need to provide proof that the person exists.

Basically, I just want no personally identifying information to be available online. I don't mind a completely wrong address being available, or whatever. Just assume for the purposes of this question that I'm extremely paranoid. Ahem.

1] Would it be simplest to pay a friend to "take over" the domain name? Nominet are requesting a utility bill as proof that the other person exists, so obviously it has to be someone real.

2] Could I register the domain as a business, but put no personal information in the business address box? I'd just give it a try, but I don't want to mess up again.

Are there any other options I should consider?

I'd like to be able to use the name, but if there is no way of hiding myself, then I'm prepared to not-use it. Nominet do have a privacy option for individuals, but it only hides the address, not the name.

How can I find the registration info for a lapsed domain name?

Hat Maui — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 11:43:23 -0800

How can I get registration information for a domain name that is expired? I have a friend who is in a legal dispute with someone. If there is some way for him to conclusively prove that a particular domain name was taken out by this person, it would be helpful to him in the dispute. However, the domain is lapsed and there is no whois information. Is this information on file somewhere? The site was registered in late 2005 or early 2006 and expired a year subsequent to that.

whois archive?

pissfactory — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 12:30:27 -0800

How can you find the previous owner of a domain name that has expired, then been reregistered?

How can I get Google to re-index my site and how did it find it in the first place?

AmbroseChapel — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:28:47 -0800

How can I get Google to re-index my site and how did it find it in the first place? Way, way before it was ready, a site I was building somehow got crawled by Google.

The version that got crawled has "lorem ipsum" text everywhere and stuff like "catchphrase goes here" in place of actual content.

[I've learned my lesson now -- I will password-protect sites in future, or use robots.txt, or whatever. There's no point lecturing me on this aspect.]

So, question one -- for some reason it got into Google. How? It wasn't linked from anywhere, and we certainly didn't go to the form on Google which says "please list my website".

The only thing we did was change hosting companies. Did Google sense a disturbance in the force when the DNS records clicked over? It seems unlikely.

Question two -- how can I get Google to come back and re-crawl the site? I've joined their SiteMaps program in the hope that would help, but it hasn't. I've used the "please crawl me" form three times now, and more than a month has gone by, and still nothing.

I assumed it would happen after a couple of weeks, but it's getting a little embarassing. When you search for the site name you get "sitename.com -- lorem ipsum blah blah tagline goes here" in the Google results.

Is there any SEO black magic which I can employ to help, or should I just wait?

Two technical details which someone said might be affecting it, although I'm not sure I believe them:

The front page which got indexed is longer the front page, it's blank with a redirect to the actual front page (for futureproofing reasons, long story).
The page which got indexed is "index.html" but has server-side includes (I tweaked the server, I like it that way); but Google doesn't know that, the page is never referred to by name, only with a trailing slash.

Historical WHOIS lookup?

superfem — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 18:30:44 -0800

Looking for a free historical WHOIS domain lookup? Trying to find WHOIS data for all previous owners of a domain (a WHOWAS lookup?).

Whois.sc offers this historical service, but it charges. Any free sites out there?

Alternatives to GoDaddy

stacyhall1 — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 09:57:11 -0800

I have a website that is hosted by DreamHost but the domain registration is at GoDaddy. I want to transfer the registration somewhere else because of GoDaddy's politics. One thing I'm looking for is private registration so that my info is not available to spammers on Whois -- GoDaddy and a few other companies do that. Anyone have any suggestions for good registration companies? Namecheap? 1&1? RegisterFly? Thanks.

How do I discover all of the domain names registered to a given party?

NinjaPirate — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 04:51:01 -0800

How do I discover all of the domain names registered to a given party? Not "who owns this domain?" but "what domains does this party own?" Recently the MD of our company discovered that a domain name very closely related to our own was registered by a direct competitor and pointed at their site. What I'd like to know is whether there is a method of finding out what other underhanded domains have been registered by this competitor.
The MD suspects very strongly that this is not be the only misleading domain registered by the specific competition and I would like to save some legwork checking a couple of hundred variations.

Online tools, shell scripts, code snippets - do you have a solution?

Fake contact info in domain registration?

bondcliff — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 08:35:30 -0800

Is there any good reason why I can't put a fake address and phone number in my domain registration info? I registered a domain a couple of days ago and I just got a call from some company asking if I needed help designing my new site. I don't need spam calls, thank you very much. Then there's the issue of privacy. I'd rather not have the entire word know my name and address. I might want to say something snarky about somebody some day.

I know there are ways to get a private registration or I could just rent a P.O. box, but both of those options will cost money.

The site is a personal blog. I can't see any reason why anyone would need to contact the administrator or the technical guy, both of which are me. As long as I list a valid email address I can be contacted. Will I be violating the US Patriot Act if I list 1234 Doody Ave, Bonerville" as my address?

What Rules Govern Domains Named After Celebrities?

petebest — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 11:13:30 -0800

CelebrityDomainFilter: what are the "rules" for websites under the [famousperson].com domains? the famous "more inside" Hypothetically, if someone registered "TheBeatles.com" or some such - what kind of content would be allowed? I'm curious as to how much fan-site material is normally tolerated or legally OK to use? Discographies? History? Anything?

Can I sell my company's unused domain name for personal profit?

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 15:10:31 -0800

My company has been offered a large sum of money for a domain name we own (but don't use). As the sole contact listed in the WHOIS, the offer was sent directly to my email address, so I'm the only person here who is aware of this offer. My company is notoriously unscrupulous, so I have no ethical hangups about just taking the money for myself. But, naturally, I don't want to break the law. Are you aware of any loopholes that might work to my advantage?

Help me identify all registered domain names containing the string fortruth.

gwint — Sun, 24 Oct 2004 11:16:08 -0800

Is there a way to get a plain text file with all currently registered domain names? Also, is there a way to use whois (from the command line or via a web site) to do partial searches (e.g. whois meta*.com) for large searches (whois seems to cut off after 20 search results)? (domainsurfer.com can do this but their db hasn't been updated for 2 years) Kind of inspired by wanting to find all of "*fortruth.*" because of this comment.

How can I privately register a .nl domain when I'm not in the Netherlands?

sebas — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 04:07:01 -0800

I would like to register a .nl domain, however I am not based in The Netherlands. Can this be done?
Bonus points if my name / address information can be kept out of whois.