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How to determine where a domain is registered. Spy games or how to find out the owner of a domain

Imagine the situation: you came up with an original, memorable address for your website, but the domain name turned out to be already taken. At the same time, the current owner of the domain is not involved in it at all, and the lease period will not end soon. The best solution is to contact the current owner of the domain and ask him to assign the rights. But how can you find out who exactly this owner is and which registrar owns the domain name? Let's figure it out.

We carefully study the site

The easiest way to reach the owner of the resource is to use the contacts listed on the site. They can be placed in the site header, in the section of the same name, in the “footer” (bottom of the page), as well as in text and graphic blocks placed on it. There is only one problem: if no one monitors the relevance of the information, or the owner has ceased his activities related to the resource, then you will never receive an answer to your request.

We use the Whois verification service

If you were unable to contact directly, the next step is to visit sites designed to be identified by domain. Today, this service is offered free of charge by dozens of services around the world. To get information about the owner and registrar, just enter the domain name in the search bar and click the “Search” button (or its equivalent). In the generated list, we will be interested in the following lines: Registrar (data about the registrar) and “Administrator” (aka Person/Org).

If everything becomes clear with the registrar at this stage, then certain difficulties may arise in determining the identity of the domain owner. If he wishes to remain anonymous (and some registrars provide this option), then instead of contact information, Private Person will be indicated in the appropriate fields. Also, incorrect or deliberately distorted data may be written there, which is a common sin of many owners who do not want to “shine” their identity and do not want to overpay the registrar for privacy. In this case, this method will be useless.

Use the contact form with domain administrators.RU, .РФ

To contact the administrator of the .RU, .РФ domains, the Whois information for the domain name contains a link to the contact form with the domain administrator. By writing a message in this form, you can be sure that it will be addressed to the owner of the domain.

We use third-party tools

In addition to services that track Whois sites on the world wide web, you can also find resources that track all domains belonging to the same owner. For example, it is enough to enter the address you are interested in on such resources, and you will receive a list of all domains registered to this person. And perhaps for at least one of them the Private Person function will be disabled.

In this article I will describe all currently relevant methods for determining the owner of a domain. I want to warn you right away that there is no one hundred percent chance that we will accurately determine the owner of the domain. This is due to the fact that some webmasters indicate fake (erroneous) information about themselves when registering domains - nothing can be done about this circumstance. I can only say that such people are in the minority, which means that the chances of finding the owner are greater than not finding them.

The owner of a domain can be determined in several ways. Let's look at each of them in detail:

1. Via Whois data

Of course, this is the simplest and most reliable method (see what Whois is). At the same time, probably everyone knows about it or has at least heard of it. There are quite a lot of services that provide complete data about a domain, and I would not be surprised if you know an even more convenient service than I will offer below. I would recommend using the following sites to determine Whois:

For example:

After receiving Whois data, you should pay attention to the “Domain Administrator” column (sometimes called person). It contains the full name of the domain owner. If this column contains Private Person, then this indicates that the owner of the domain has decided to remain anonymous. This can be done by enabling the Private Person option in the domain properties, which hides the full name. However, even in this case there is a way to calculate it. I suggest two ways to do this:

a) If you know the e-mail, then there is a chance of finding the owner through this data. To do this, log in to the service http://2ip.ru/domain-list-by-email/, enter the mailbox address and it will give you all the domains of this person. Perhaps in some domains the Private Person option will be disabled and in this indirect way the owner can be determined.

b) View the history of the domain. I recommend using the following free services that allow you to do this:

  • http://who.is/ (does not show the whole history, but only from 2011-2012)
  • http://whoishistory.ru/ (also works with domains.рф, but requires authorization to work)
  • http://whoistory.com/ (works only with domains.ru, excellent service, below is a screenshot from this service)

For example:

Finally, I would like to say that if using all the above methods did not suit you, then, for example, in reg.ru it is possible to find out for a fee the entire history of the domain owners (if the domain has changed its owner). To be honest, I have never used such a service, so I can’t say anything about its effectiveness. By the way, many registrars have paid services for determining the owner.

Below will be listed all the remaining methods, or rather the signs by which you can find out at least something about the owner of the domain. However, the chances of success are much lower than the considered method of determination through Whois.

2. Through WebArchive

Visit the WebArchive website: http://archive.org/web/web.php. Enter the site you need into the search and see the history. If it is, then try to find some contacts on the site. Perhaps they contain a solution or at least something useful in your case.

For example:

3. Try to contact the domain owner

I see only two ways to contact the owner:
a) or write a letter to the address indicated in whois (but it may not be indicated);
b) or write to the address: admin@DOMAIN.

By the way, if you don’t know where to write, then try searching through some search engine for the following phrase: “@DOMAIN”. Perhaps somewhere in the index there is information about valid email addresses for this domain.

As a last resort, you can call by phone if it is on the site (or on other sites of this owner) or in Whois.

Lastly, I want to talk about one interesting service that allows you to identify all sites of one owner (though only in the domain zones.ru and.рф). This can be done on the website: http://2ip.ru/domain-list-by-email/.

For example:

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Remember the classic detective genre about the adventures of detective Holmes? Under the gloomy sky of Foggy Albion, he solved mysteries that were beyond the power of the police. Let's put ourselves in his place and try to find out who owns the domain.

Why do you need to know who the domain owner is?

  • You are going to buy a website. Therefore, you need to know his ins and outs. What if the domain is sold not by its owner, but by a fraudster?
  • If you previously worked with a web studio that registered a name for the site, and then for some reason refused its services. Accordingly, both the site itself and its name need to be transferred under your control. To do this, you need to know where everything “lies.”
  • After the registration procedure, you need to check whether the administrator (for example, you) is indicated correctly.
  • If you are starting a business with an unfamiliar web resource, you need to check who owns the domain name and website.
  • If you buy advertising space on a third-party web resource, and a hacker can sell it.
  • You ordered a product or service, sent payment to the site, but did not receive the order.
  • When you became a victim of a fraudster (re-registered a domain fraudulently, etc.).

In order to check information about the owner of a domain - to whom it is registered - there are several ways.

1. WHOIS

Many online services offer history checking services. Let's give an example of a check on the Ru-center website.

Enter your name in the field provided and click WHOIS.

Information about the owner is open:

Further example - information is closed:

From the example given, we see the date of registration and release, the hoster, the contacts of the registrar (this is Ru-center), and you can also contact the administrator by clicking on the appropriate link.

You will be taken to a feedback form through which you can send a message to the admin in your personal account on the registrar company’s website. Unfortunately, in our example, the information about the admin itself is hidden (as the administrator wished).

Sometimes you don't need a site name to get data. You can “pierce” web resources by IP. This is the unique address where a website is located on the Internet. In order to find out what IP an Internet resource is located on, you can use the online service 2ip or other similar ones.

You can also “ping” the IP through your PC connected to the Internet. Select the “Run” command and write “ping domain-site-name” in the window.

We get:

When it is not possible to establish a closed person, but we receive an IP address that can be entered into a WHOIS service, for example, in the Nirosoft program.

We launch the appropriate application and enter the IP we are interested in.

After this you will receive information based on the IP data.

2. Registrar company

If the person is hidden, then the registrar company always has information about the administrator. The registrar can be easily accessed using any of the previously described services.

If an urgent need arises, you can contact the registrar company (through government agencies - police, court, etc.), and it will be obliged to provide the domain owner’s information upon an official request. There is one caveat: if the name is registered to a non-existent person, then, unfortunately, it will not be possible to identify the real owner.

The registrar's website is always displayed in WHOIS.

Last resort - the most famous Runet registrars

  • Ru-center.
  • P-01.
  • Reg-ru.
  • Gandhi.
  • Reggae.
  • 101domain.
  • Webnames
  • Godeddi et al.

Usually, we begin to find out information about the administrator only when we become victims of scammers. Therefore, before risky transactions, check your partners in advance. It is better to spend a few minutes searching for information than to lose money or sites later. And if you doubt the owner, it’s better not to risk it.

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Another manual for novice scouts.

Information about the domain owner is confidential and is provided by the registrar only at the request of the authorities. But there are several possible ways to find her out. We will talk about them in this article.

Why is this needed: find justice for a person who brazenly steals your content, assess the solvency of the site owner before making him an offer to purchase, find a specialist in a narrow field who writes sensible articles for his blog, but signs with an impersonal nickname, etc.

1. Look at the whois history

You should start by checking the site on who.is. The screenshot shows an example when, with the help of this service, not only the email, but also the mobile phone number and address of the owner became known (this happens if you are very lucky). I'm shocked by my hoster's privacy policy! In most cases, only a link is displayed that allows you to send a message to the domain owner through the registrar. And with its help there is a chance to learn a lot of interesting things.

2. We try to contact him in an official way

The result depends on luck. It is unknown whether a person checks the email that he specified when registering a domain and how reliable the data he provided is. Your social engineering skills are also important. You can offer investments, introduce yourself as Yuri Milner’s assistant :-), convince them that they definitely need to call by phone or Skype, ask about the possibility of a personal meeting. The main thing is to convince the person that fate has given him a real chance to earn money and to beg for as much data as possible that can be used in further exploration.

It is advisable to add the phrase: “Please let me know that you are not interested in the offer.” This increases the chance that a person will drop a few lines out of politeness, exposing his email, name and IP address.

Knowing the email of the former owner (and his nickname), you can find his advertisement for the sale of a site/domain on a specialized forum and a list of users who responded to it. From these, you can create a circle of possible current domain owners.

3. We are looking for sites registered in the name of the owner

Knowing a person's email address, you can find out which domains are registered to him. You can do this at domainiq.com. It is possible that one of these sites will be a personal blog, through which a person’s identity can be identified.

4. Contact the hoster

12. Reading comments in the source code

We go to the site, click Shift + Command + U(or select the item from the menu Show page code). First, we look through the HTML code for fake comments with names and nicknames. For example: “BigFatNagibator, please check this place!” Along the way, we are looking for js scripts that were written by the site owner specifically for this resource. It is possible that they may contain the solemn inscription “Created by Sasha Petrov. Irkutsk" and a link to his Github profile.