What is WHOIS?
WHOIS is a lookup service that tells you about a registered domain name: whether it is registered at all, which registrar it is registered with, the nameservers it uses, its status, and its key dates (registration, last update and expiry).
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) policies require all domain registrants keep their contact information valid and up-to-date to help prevent fraud and identity theft.
What a lookup shows varies from one registry to the next. Three tools cover most needs:
Do not be put off if these sites no longer say "WHOIS". The old WHOIS protocol is being replaced by RDAP (Registration Data Access Protocol), so ICANN's tool is now called the Registration data lookup tool and Nominet's is called Domain Lookup. They answer the same question.
If your domain name is a UK domain (i.e. .UK, .CO.UK, .ORG.UK, .ME.UK etc.) you may instead wish to use Nominet's Domain Lookup, which is the registry for those domains.
Domain registrars such as ourselves typically allow their clients to change their domain contact information directly from their client accounts. Please do however be wary, updates to WHOIS information may take up to 24 hours (this would be due to some searches being cached).
Some domain registries do allow domain owners to hide specific details on the WHOIS database replacing any information with random information (usually of the registrar, registry or hosting company). This feature would be named WHOIS privacy, but can also be referred to as ID Protection or domain privacy. It sits on top of the redaction registries already apply, and it is what puts the registrar's details in the record in place of yours. At Krystal, we provide WHOIS privacy free of charge, and it is applied by default on the domain types that support it. .uk domains work differently. Nominet runs its own rules for .uk, .co.uk, .org.uk and the rest of the family: its opt-out hides your address but still publishes your name, and it is available only to individuals, not to businesses - so a .co.uk registered to a company cannot be made private. See Do I need a domain privacy service? for the detail. Information for your domain name will only show on the WHOIS database if you reach out to our support team and explicitly request your information is shown online.
