Whois ?

[Scott S.]

Is there anyway to find out who was the last person to have a domain that has dropped?

The old owner so to speak.

Scott,

 

[dax]

I think there is no such service yet (WhoWas? :D )

 

[cerebus]

You could always try archive.org to see if there was a previous site there, or see what the owner info at alexa says (this can be very out of date though). Other than that I know no ways to do it.

 

[Scott S.]

That archive.org helped thanks!!!

Scott

 

[jj2ii3344]

Haha, the notion of a whowas service is funny, is it doable??

 

[dax]

Originally posted by jj2ii3344
Haha, the notion of a whowas service is funny, is it doable??

Offcourse its doable, just you have to have arrangement with registrars that you can collect data from their whois database on periodic basis.

Since there is over 100 registrars at the time, you should make a deal with each of them, know how their whois works (in order not to get IP-banned), and have very good communication infrastructure (whois has much more data than DNS zone files).

Why each? Because then your reports will not be complete, and because some of them can ban (or even sue) you because collecting mass data.

I think thats it. :D

 

[RJ]

Dialog.com has a pay service to lookup whois records from the past. I've used them dozens of times and their database is fairly complete. It gets pricy though.

If you're just interested in the previous owner, check Alexa.com also. Often they'll list the previous domain owner.