Finding the Owner of a Domain Name & Domains owned by a person

You can find the owner of a domain name using a quick and free Whois search with any domain provider like:

1. http://whois.domaintools.com/

2. http://whois.net

3. http://domains.whois.com/ or so.

Steps:

1. Go to whois search site (lets say: option1 above).

2. In 'Search Whois record' bar, enter the site name (say: blogspot.com), including .com,.net etc. (some sites you need to select this from drop-down) and Search.

It displays the Owner details (Registrant incl. address & other contact details), Registrar (Domain hosting company), Created,Updated & Expiry dates, domain status (clientTransferProhibited, clientUpdateProhibited etc. when registrar is in charge).

You can also see the other domains registered in teh name of the registrant, if any.

Some whois sites, give you the provision to buy (if domainname available to buy) or if domainname owned it may broker to acquire. If don't wanna go thru a broker, contact the owner directly; he can help unless site is 'clientTransferProhibited'.

Most of the Whois don't tend to store registration details esp. com domains (Thin Whois server); others (Thick Whois server) stores the complete WHOIS information from all the registrars for the particular set of data (eg: of all org domains). Some thin client internally fires whois query to other registrars before displaying. If not so then note the "Whois Server" in the lesser details available and go to the site and search.

Querying individual Regional Internet Registries directly
WHOIS servers operated by Regional Internet Registries (RIR) can be queried directly to determine the Internet Service Provider responsible for a particular resource. For web-based searches, these server URLs are:
Regional Internet Registries

    * AfriNIC: http://whois.afrinic.net/
    * APNIC: http://www.apnic.net/whois/
    * ARIN: http://ws.arin.net/whois/
    * LACNIC: http://whois.lacnic.net/
    * RIPE NCC: http://www.ripe.net/whois/

The records of each of these registries are cross-referenced, so that a query to ARIN for a record which belongs to RIPE will return a placeholder pointing to the RIPE WHOIS server. This lets the WHOIS user making the query know that the detailed information resides on the RIPE server. In addition to the RIRs servers, commercial services exist, such as the Routing Assets Database used by some large networks (e.g., large Internet providers that acquired other ISPs in several RIR areas).

Thru Commandline:

whois -h com.whois-servers.net blogspot.com

Getting whois server (eg: for au domains):

$ dig +short _nicname._tcp.au srv

0 0 43 whois.ausregistry.com.au.

About Whois:

WHOIS is a query/response protocol that is widely used for querying databases in order to determine the registrant or assignee of Internet resources, such as a domain name, an IP address block, or an autonomous system number. WHOIS services are typically communicated using the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). Servers listen to requests on the well-known port number 43.

Today, WHOIS is used beyond determining the registration status of domain names like:

• Assisting law enforcement authorities in investigations for enforcing national and international laws, including, for example, countering terrorism-related criminal offenses and in supporting international cooperation procedures.
• Assisting in the combating against abusive uses of Information communication technology, such as illegal and other acts motivated by racism, racial discrimination etc.
• Facilitating inquiries and subsequent steps to conduct trademark clearances and to help counter intellectual property infringement, misuse and theft in accordance with applicable national laws and international treaties.
• Assisting businesses, other organizations and users in combating fraud, complying with relevant laws and safeguarding the interests of the public.