How can I find Who owns a Domain name?

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A domain registrant is a person or company that is the owner of that particular domain name and is able to make changes to information regarding that domain. You may want to know who the domain registrant if you wanted to make an offer for that domain or wanted to contact them about content on the domain. Here’s how you can find the owner of a domain.

Completing a WHOIS lookup

The WHOIS tool allows you to check and find information about particular domain names. Checking a domain name using a WHOIS tool will give you information regarding when the domain was registered, the expiry date and contact information. Various websites have this WHOIS tool and it doesn’t matter who the domain was registered with as this information will be available from whichever website you decide to use.

I personally, would recommend using WHOIS.net or the GoDaddy WHOIS tool as these are the easiest and quickest tools to use without many steps.

How do I do a WHOIS lookup?

  1. Visit the WHOIS.net website
  2. Enter the full domain for which you want to find out more information for and click enter or the search button
  3. You will be presented with all the information for that particular domain

I can’t find the information and it gives me a private name.
This is because of an add-on called WhoisGuard which shields domain registration information. After recent changes to privacy laws, the majority of domain registrars now offer WhoisGuard for free with all domain purchases (including big ones like NameCheap) and therefore the majority of domains will now have their registration information set to private. 

One example of this in action is for BeerMoneyForum.com itself. Completing a WHOIS lookup for this domain will show you that the registered name is private as shown below.

This is to ensure that hackers cannot use the information to hijack accounts, helps avoid fraud and also helps to keep user information private so that they aren’t bombarded by spam to their emails and even home address.

Unfortunately, this means that you won’t be able to use a WHOIS lookup to find out the name of who has registered the domain unless you want to file a claim against them or have a subpoena. However, don’t be let down. You can always contact the owner of the site hosted on that particular domain to find out information regarding who registered that domain. In most cases, the owner of the site will be the individual that registered the domain so no further searches will need to be made.

Do you have a specific question and looking for exact answer? Check this forum topic:

https://www.beermoneyforum.com/threads/how-can-i-find-who-owns-a-domain-name.1757/

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