Laker - 7:16 pm on Aug 31, 2007 (gmt 0)

I think it could have been more likely that placing a backorder could tip off someone, several years ago -- before registrars got greedy and competed against their own customers :-o

It used to be that even the biggest backorder services would only accept one backorder for a domain name. Today, very few are still that way ... now, more often than not, a backorder is placed, but if the name is successfully grabbed it goes into an auction ... so it may be the deepest pockets who win, not the early bird.

[EDIT] On rereading this, I'm not sure I replied to your question ... "does checking through whois tip someone off". Interestingly, there's one whois service I've always avoided, just because I had this nagging suspicion in the back of my mind ...

The more rational side of me says "naaa" -- after all there are likely tens of thousands of whois searches done per day ... and then, there is a little voice that says "'ya never know ... anything can be tracked ..."

[edited by: Laker at 7:28 pm (utc) on Aug. 31, 2007]