Get the top HN stories in your inbox every day.
talideon
The only reason why WHOIS actually needed to stick around for so long is because of thin registries (.com and .net are examples) where the registrar manages the contact information for the domain rather than the registry.
When you do a domain transfer, the registrars involved are required to get confirmation of the transfer, which means that the gaining registrar needs a way to query the contact information for the domain. With thick registries, all the gaining registrar needs to query this is the EPP key (AKA the transfer code, transfer key, authinfo, &c.) and the domain name, and then they have read-only access to the domain object and any contact object associated with the domain in question. With thin registries, there's no such thing, so the only way to implement ICANN's Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy is to query WHOIS. Up until ICANN finally forced a standard format on gTLD WHOIS responses, this was a nightmare as all too many registries would go out of their way to make it difficult to get any information out of WHOIS.
I'm glad to see WHOIS starting to die for domain names and be replaced with RDAP.
dontbesquare
sudo apt-get install whois
whois google.com
CydeWeys
Worth pointing out that WHOIS is sunsetting in January 2025 and that RDAP (already live) is the replacement.
pabs3
Is this what you mean by WHOIS sunsetting? Do you have any more/other details?
https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/icann-board-approves-...
CydeWeys
Yes, that's it exactly, particularly this part:
> The global amendments specify operational requirements for providing Registration Data Directory Services (RDDS) via RDAP and detail the sunset of certain obligations for registries and registrars to provide RDDS via the WHOIS protocol by 28 January 2025.
Note that, because registries will be contractually mandated to support RDAP, and that if they choose to continue supporting WHOIS they will be subject to additional uptime/monitoring requirements on WHOIS that they wouldn't be if they simply dropped WHOIS, most are planning on dropping WHOIS as soon as possible.
rongrimes
So long and thanks for all the fish^H^H^H^H whois look ups. geektools always seemed able to dig a little deeper than anybody else - I'll miss them.
iorrus
I used to use this when I was just starting out on the web and the internet was still new. I used it quite frequently over the years initially but not for a long time.
I feel a bit sad, it represented the hacker culture of the early web which unfortunately is long gone. A different time.
undefined
superkuh
Also, GDPR has put potential legal liability pressure on registrars and most have dropped having any useful WHOIS information.
technion
Public who's details have become absurd. Register any domain and choose not to use domain privacy. Your inbox will fill up over the next hour with people wanting to sell you seo services or a new WordPress installation. I don't mean five or five or six spam emails, I mean you could see over a hundred umin the first hour . Such mailboxes are sure to become unusable .
lazide
If you register in a tld which doesn’t allow privacy (.net or .us? Forget which) everything leaks. Kiss goodbye to your phone number. I accidentally did this and got 50 calls within the first 8 hrs. It was insane.
zinekeller
It was .us, operated by GoDaddy ;)
Not surprised on this, especially on the GoDaddy part. Although .uk also has no-proxies rule, at least Nominet themselves don't reveal your details if you're an individual even before GDPR (the idea being that if you're a company you have enough money to handle public requests).
wongarsu
It's interesting to see the evolution of the .de whois. Germany is one of these countries that unsurprisingly doesn't allow domain privacy for various legal reasons, but this clashes with the equally strong privacy desire. Back in (not so) ancient times you just got all info with a normal whois, then the whois started giving you less info and told you to go to the registrar's website (denic.de) where you had to fill out a captcha. With GDPR came some checkboxes to verify you have legitimate reasons to get this info. Now even that is gone, you have to either send them an email or fill out a pdf, sign it and email it to them.
sen
That’s exactly why I’ve used an “admin@“ address for decades now on email registrations. It has a filter that will then redirect anything from the registrar’s domain and junk anything else.
Aachen
That's fun and I like the idea, until the ICANN decides you need to verify your domain or it'll be terminated within two weeks. Who knows what email sending service or domain they'll decide to use. (OVH, for instance, sent me this not only from a different domain, but from a different country TLD altogether than previous emails from them.)
Do you also have a dedicated phone number for your registrar to call? And home address? The whole thing is a bit iffy, I'd much rather that my personal information remains with the party that can relay any relevant queries.
Another problem with using an inbox @ your domain is that, when there's a problem with your domain... good luck receiving that email. I have two accounts with the registrar for different domains and they point to each other. Not great, perhaps I should open a hotmail for this that relays copies of any emails so I still get the notifications during normal times, but it's something.
geraldhh
sweet!
hoping your registrar does indeed send his 'very important mail' from that domain .
wlesieutre
Don’t forget your physical mailbox too
steve_taylor
I've received a few official-looking fake renewal notices over the years.
ghuntley
emails? I wish. I get random calls from India for “web site design and seo optimisation” that got my digits from whois info.
pablog8
Choose to use domain privacy and you will receive the same spam but with your email proxied/obfuscated. Happened to me last week.
lloydatkinson
I haven’t experienced this with Google domains or Cloudflare.
CydeWeys
WHOIS is still useful for telling you registrar, registration date, and nameservers. That's mostly what I ever used it for.
b112
You need to dig the root nameservers these days, if you really want accurate glue record lookups. Don't trust whois.
CydeWeys
Two different systems operating at different layers, though. I WHOIS the domain when I want to know which nameservers the registry thinks the domain should have. You can then dig in DNS to see what those nameservers are responding, but that's a separate level.
(Note: I work in this field.)
appleaday1
I dont feel so good about this.
vrglvrglvrgl
[dead]
Get the top HN stories in your inbox every day.
Awww... this was my go-to since the 90s. I loved the simplicity of the place. Great nostalgia.
To be fair, I haven't use it much over the past decade or so mostly because the nature of my work has changed and the info has become increasingly useless over time.... but just a couple of weeks ago I gave it a go just to see if it was still around. I guess that test didn't age well.