New Whois tool by domaintools - Wow !

[gazzip]

I just noticed this on the domain tools blog

"Registrant Search allows anyone to search through this massive whois database using a registrant name, email address, physical address, or phone number to return a list of domains that have that search term in it."

It costs a fair bit but what a great tool if you can afford it :tu: Take a Peek !

http://blog.domaintools.com/2007/10/registrant-search/

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[Dave_Z]

Since cached records are searched, even private registrations might show up if purchased after you registered the name instead of at the same time.

http://blog.domaintools.com/2007/10/registrant-search/

Jay - what about domains with private registrations? I assume it won’t locate those, true?

UPDATE BY JAY: That is correct, it would not locate anyone with a private registration.

What Jay probably means is it'll still show domain names bearing that privacy
service, but it definitely won't reveal who owns it underneath that.

 

[AdoptableDomains]

My head hurts Dave, how is anything private if it still comes up as being owned by you but not stating it in the whois ?

Scenario:

I register a name using my own name, or I buy a name from someone who puts it in my name. A day, week, month or any time later, I changed to Privacy registration. If the service searches all cached records, it may find the time before I activated privacy service. What could it do?

1. Since the current record has privacy service, it shouldn't return that domain.
2. Since the cached whois does have my name, it might do one of several things
A. not show the name on the list assuming it's the current private owner.
B. Show the name as owner or previous owner, but hide the private info from the whois record in case it's the current privatized data.
C. Show the cached whois record with all data as of the cache date.

The question is, what does it do with cached records if the current record is private.

 

[End User King]

Nice tool. I signed up for the Gold year package. I'll do a post
on how effective I found it.

 

[AdoptableDomains]

I played around with some preliminary searches to see how many domains came up with my name in various ways. In my case it would be difficult to do a single search that would bring up all names.

Some are listed as "firstname lastname" Some are listed as "lastname, firstname"

Some phone numbers are listed as ###-###-####, some as #########, and some as ### ### ###, with various usage of the country codes.

An interesting search is just of zip code alone. It kind of made my wonder who else in my zip code owns domains. It only came up with about 115 domains that didn't include my last name when I searched zip alone vs. zip and name. I"m not willing to pay $589 to see the list though.

Since it appears all fields of a whois record are searchable, someone could search domain owners geographically or demographically by:
zip, city, street name, phone/fax number, email address, streetname and zip, etc.

Unfortunately, you can't specify which field to search a string for. Searching "madison" seems to search city, street, and company, and registrant fields that might have that string. The service is a little expensive to not be able to narrow down which fields a search relates to. Searching zip code or email address seems the only way to limit searching for something like this and not getting information from other fields.

Even without resulting data, here are some interesting searches:
John Doe is in the whois of 1590 domains
Registerfly is in the whois of 32,453 domains
godaddy has 12,861
Microsoft is in the whois of 360,405 domains
international business machines is in 373
Google is in 319,141
Yahoo is in 379,957
enron has 253
namepros is in the whois of 52 domains.
domain name owners association is in 311
DNOA is in 66
name intelligence has 21,496
Donald Trump is in the whois of only 15 domains.
George Bush is in 614
George W Bush is in 18
hillary clinton is in 46
mickey mouse is in 16
cinderella has 501
walt disney has 846
superman has 431
oj simpson has 6
osama bin laden is in 19
indianapolis colts has 23
anonymous is in 11,121
none of your business is in 353
none of your damn business is in 23
for sale is in 2,488,246
F*ck you is in 148
555-1212 (information phone number) returns 29,208
33040 (key west, FL zip code) is in 11,019
99723 and Alaska (Barrow Alaska zip code) is in 32
Minot, ND has 1,056
Grand Cayman returns 585,784
Havana, Cuba returns 38
San Juan and Dominican Republic returns 7

Oh well, just the preliminary search is fun to play with.

 

[mktgmark]

Interesting tool.
My only use for it currently is more of as a curiosity so it's definitely not worth the price for me.

My initial reaction is that it'll be used for evil more than it will be used for good.

 

[Dave_Z]

Extracting that information or providing it when a name has privacy protect the whole time is a violation imo. Now if the names whois info was once public and now private I can understand the results but not when private from date of registration.

You mean violation of privacy? A registrar might have a case, but not the end
user unless someone's up to giving it a shot.

 

[sashas]

The tools could be useful, but could also be used for not so good things. Would you want your employer, your spouse, or your kids to know every domain you owned or once owned due to cached records? Would you want a divorce lawyer finding all your domain assets? Would you want your adversary in a UDRP or TM dispute to know every domain you own? Would you want someone who was "out to get you", or a stalker to know all your domains? How about a news reporter if something happened to you or you were running for public office.

Since cached records are searched, even private registrations might show up if purchased after you registered the name instead of at the same time.

I see potential for good, but also potential misuse if in the wrong hands, regardless of cost. Hopefully the cost will be prohibitive for casual use at this point. It would be handy to search all my own domains, or maybe someone who registered one illegitimately in my name for virus or spam use. I think this is one of those things that should be monitored based on who has access though, to insure it's not abused.

I also wonder what TLD's they are searching other than the top 6 they specialize in (if any).

I presume you could thwart searches by using different versions your name such as Thos., T., Tom, Thomas for first name and different email addresses or street addresses. I can see this actually encouraging private/proxy registrations which I don't necessarily think is a good thing.

I really don't have anything to hide myself, since virtually all my "for sale" domains are listed on my site, afternic, sedo, etc.

I fully agree. This is one of the most powerful tools at the disposal of a domainer. However, I'm pretty sure that the owner of BigFatTitt*ies.com wouldn't want his wife to find out that he owns the name.

Accept it, as domainers, we tend to register names and do stuff that can really hurt us if it were all out in the open. If Barrack Obama was a domainer, I bet he would've had a really tough time getting elected with this tool around.

Btw, this is one hell of a tool for newbies to learn...

 

[End User King]

This tool is a domainers treasure. Good luck finding end users
the hard way! Now at least if they dont like Name A, they may
like Name B, or C or D.