Do registrars hand out domain whois information?

[Marcia]

I know I have to sign in with a code to get to see the whois. I had a domain name parked briefly at the registrar and then put it up to get to work on the site. No one really knew about it, and it certainly isn't one that anyone would by any chance look for randomly.

I noticed a hit in the stats, and found my whois information on a site not belonging to the registrar. I got a little upset about it because I assumed it's only revealed if someone specifically looks by domain name.

I'm half tempted to get on the registrars case and complain about it. I can't even see the info myself without typing in a code - how would someone get it without doing a search for THAT domain name. And what's it doing out on the internet anyway, outside of normal whois records?

Isn't that information kept confidential unless there's a specific whois query for a domain name?

[Jenstar]

There are many whois sites out there where you can type in a domain name and find out who owns the site. I get referrals from these kinds of sites several times a week. Many of these whois services will provide a direct link to the website you are doing a whois search for, which is why it shows up in my logs.

It could have also been a result from one of the domain selection services (type in a keyword and it will show you registered domains using that word, as well as possible unregistered domains.) So someone might not have been looking for your domain name specifically, but happened to click on it if it came up in the list out of curiosity.

But I do believe they are generated on-the-fly, only when someone does a whois search on that particular domain, because it gets the information from whoever the registrar is.

As for the code, many registrars have security measures to prevent against email harvesters. GoDaddy and several other registrars require you to enter a generated code before allowing you to see the whois. But this isn't a prevention that would stop anyone else from seeing your whois information.

Now, if you registered it and paid the extra your information to be private (ie. Domains by Proxy) and your whois info pops up as you, then you definitely have something to complain about.

[jmccormac]

'm half tempted to get on the registrars case and complain about it. I can't even see the info myself without typing in a code - how would someone get it without doing a search for THAT domain name. And what's it doing out on the internet anyway, outside of normal whois records?

Domain names are not invisible. You may be confusing the web visibility of whois information with the way it is done in network operations. At the command line, I can type 'whois domainname.com' and I will get the registrar information and will then be referred to the registrar's whois where I would in most cases be shown the whois data. A web based whois will, under the hood, go through the same process but will parse the returned data for display. Sometime it will cache the results so that if someone searches for that domain again, it can show the same data without doing another lookup.

I have an idea of the site in question and it is one of the more useful sites on the internet. Basically what it does is check that the website exists (this is where the entry in the log may have come from) and then store the data in a database. The domain will also have a link to the whois data which on clicking, will lookup the whois data for the domain.

In any case, if the domain has good keywords, then somebody will potentially check it out. And they may well be using one of these lookup sites to do so.

Regards...jmcc