WHOIS

WHOIS (and its modern replacement RDAP) is the public record for every domain on the internet. Who registered it, when, through whom, and when it expires. Reading a WHOIS output well tells you a lot about who is actually behind a domain, and whether the registrar chain is honest about itself.

These articles walk through real WHOIS records, explain the fields that matter, and show you how to verify a registrar before trusting them with your domain. We also built a free WHOIS Lookup tool that queries RDAP directly, so you can run the same checks yourself.