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Checking Who Registered a .eu

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Before you do anything else you should check who has registered the .eu domain you are interested in.

Unfortunately this might not be an easy task.

While Eurid offer a traditional whois lookup and a web-based form the quality of the data provided is not particularly good, nor is it uniform.

If the information is available you should try to identify the following information:

  • Which registrar registered the domain
  • Are there any nameservers configured/listed?
  • If there are nameservers where does the domain point to?

Other information, such as who actually owns the domain, may not be as easily visible as with other TLDs.

For example, the output on this domain via traditional whois is:

% % WHOIS isquattedyour
Domain: isquattedyour
Status: REGISTERED
Registered: Mon Apr 24 2006

Registrant:
Please visit www.eurid.eu for webbased whois.

Agent Technical Contacts:
Phone: +352.26372525
Fax: +352.26372537
Email: eu-hostmaster@eurodns.com

Registrar:
Name: EuroDNS S.A.
Website: eurodns.com

Nameservers:
ns.blacknightsolutions.com
ns2.blacknightsolutions.com

Obviously there are nameservers or you wouldn’t be able to view this page, but who owns the domain?

The web-based whois service is a little bit more helpful:

Name isquattedyour
Status REGISTERED
Registered 24 April 2006
Last update 24 April 2006 17:08
Registrant
Name Neylon Michele
Organisation Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd
Language English
Address address
Phone phone
Email email
Registrar technical contacts
Name Goubet Pierre-Yves
Organisation EuroDNS S.A.
Language English
Address 41 z.a. am Bann
L-3372 Leudelange
Luxembourg
Phone +352.26372525
Fax +352.26372537
Email eu-hostmaster@eurodns.com
Registrar
Organisation EuroDNS S.A.
Website eurodns.com
Nameservers

ns.blacknightsolutions.com
ns2.blacknightsolutions.com
History

However I have nothing to hide and have provided all the details. If you perform the same search on a lot of other .eu domains you won’t find as much information. In most cases all you will see is the Registrar technical contacts and the registrant (owner) email address without any other idenitifiable information.

This lack of clarity and transparency in whois data could prove to be highly problematic going forward, as it does not conform to the level of best practices one would expect of a domain registry and can lead to confusion.

Filed Under: Domains, Eurid

About Michele Neylon

Michele is founder and managing director of Irish domain registrar and hosting company Blacknight. Michele has been deeply involved in domain and internet policy discussions for more than a decade.
He also co-hosts the Technology.ie podcast.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. cgarvey says

    The level of detail in the web-based WHOIS seems to depend on the registrar as well. Not all registrars forward your name/organisation details. For example, EUInternet don’t let you specify what you do and don’t want to make available to WHOIS. So, like you say, Email and Language are the only available fields for the registrant.

  2. Ross Cooney says

    Michele, you are a adwords whore…you will do anything to get a page impression…Ross

  3. admin says

    Cgarvey – I would consider this lack of clarity to be an issue considering the number of issues that people are experiencing

    Ross – adsense dear adsense 🙂