When you register a domain you input personal information about yourself (or whoever you want really.. ) or you can pay to have that information hidden. So think of a WHOIS lookup as a digital phonebook of all of those records, except some of those records might be lies or private. It's the contact information tied to an IP address or domain. It's mainly used to report Abuse on a site. For example, if someone figured out a way to spoof spam emails from dev.to, if there is a WHOIS record someone could report it to the proper admin.
AFAIK it's prohibited to put whoever you want for the info about the domain holder. ICANN makes registrars to periodically sends notifications to you to check if your personal info is okay. They can freeze or completely remove your domain if they'll find out you're lying with the WHOIS info. Paying for hiding the info would only hide it from regular users, ICANN (and probably other companies/users) still can ask for it in a legal form (a signed document or something like that).
The Expert Working Group (EWG) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) recommended on 24 June 2013 that WHOIS should be scrapped. It recommends that WHOIS be replaced with a system that keeps information secret from most Internet users, and only discloses information for "permissible purposes."
This is still important for those who look for WHOIS privacy and thinks that putting random stuff in the "domain holder" form isn't that bad. I did it once and received a mail that if the info is wrong, your domain may be removed. I reverted it immediately because:
I didn't know about that.
I didn't want to lose my domain :)
Of course those who spread malware on the Internet doesn't care about that. I guess they have some methods to register domains without putting a lot of info and don't get banned, but I'm not one of them so I don't know :)
I mentioned it to reaffirm that a WHOIS record is not a reliable source for attribution. Just because there's a name and phone number for a malicious site in a WHOIS record doesn't mean it's real.
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
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When you register a domain you input personal information about yourself (or whoever you want really.. ) or you can pay to have that information hidden. So think of a WHOIS lookup as a digital phonebook of all of those records, except some of those records might be lies or private. It's the contact information tied to an IP address or domain. It's mainly used to report Abuse on a site. For example, if someone figured out a way to spoof spam emails from dev.to, if there is a WHOIS record someone could report it to the proper admin.
AFAIK it's prohibited to put whoever you want for the info about the domain holder. ICANN makes registrars to periodically sends notifications to you to check if your personal info is okay. They can freeze or completely remove your domain if they'll find out you're lying with the WHOIS info. Paying for hiding the info would only hide it from regular users, ICANN (and probably other companies/users) still can ask for it in a legal form (a signed document or something like that).
(c) Wikipedia.
This is probably less important for someone who knows their site will be taken down within a day for phishing or distributing malware though right?
This is still important for those who look for WHOIS privacy and thinks that putting random stuff in the "domain holder" form isn't that bad. I did it once and received a mail that if the info is wrong, your domain may be removed. I reverted it immediately because:
Of course those who spread malware on the Internet doesn't care about that. I guess they have some methods to register domains without putting a lot of info and don't get banned, but I'm not one of them so I don't know :)
I mentioned it to reaffirm that a WHOIS record is not a reliable source for attribution. Just because there's a name and phone number for a malicious site in a WHOIS record doesn't mean it's real.