I wanted to take some time to explore who is now who is is a query and response protocol that allows
us to identify registered users for domains and specific information associated with the internet.
So there's two different functionalities that we can utilize.
The who is feature.
One is a website that is literally who is now other domains.
Other uh, databases have that.
For instance, I know GoDaddy has one.
I'm sure Google has one.
I prefer this one.
It's literally called whois.
And I can go in and I can put IP addresses or domain.
Now I'm going to put in Amazon.com, hit enter and you can see that it provides me some good information.
For instance, it tells me that Markmonitor incorporated is associated with it.
It tells me who is Markmonitor dot com provides in the server.
It tells us the referrer is markmonitor.
Com it also provides us the status.
It tells us when the information or the domain expires.
For instance, this one expires on October 30th of 2024.
It also provides us the date it was registered on.
So for instance, Amazon.com came into being on November 1st of 1994.
It's really not that old of a company.
It was last updated on five over 16 of 2023, which means that it's lasting a little bit.
We can also see the specific name servers associated with Amazon.com, as well as similar domains associated
with Amazon.com.
If we scroll down, we can see some registered contact information, and we can see that if we wanted
to contact the domain owner, we would contact Legal Services or the legal department and Amazon.
The Amazon Technologies Incorporated, that gives us the address.
It even gives us a phone number and a fax number if people still use those anymore.
Based on that, we know that it's in Washington with that 206 area code.
We can find the administrative contact information as well as the technical contact information, all
related back to the same department.
Now, a lot of times this information will be well, I wouldn't say missing, but it's not there.
A lot of times we're not pointing to a specific individual.
We're pointing to a department.
And this is on purpose.
But there's some good information.
If I wanted to identify the specific domain information associated with it.
The next way to do it is by opening up terminal.
And let me blow this up a little bit so you can see it better.
And we literally type in who is Amazon.com now.
It gives us the same information, but if we scroll up a little bit, it gives us an A guy or I should
say a command line interface, uh, portion.
And if I scroll up all the way to the top, a lot of the same information is still there.
It's just not as easy to read.
We can see that the updated contact information, we can see the creation date.
And again, none of this information is changing.
It's just in a different format.
I'm often asked by brand new students whether or not one is more valid than the other.
And to that I say normally it doesn't matter.
The information is pulling from the same databases, and so it really is just how you perceive or how
you want the data fed to you.
Do you want it in a command line interface module or do you want it in a web documented module?
It really depends on what you're trying to accomplish.
I honestly feel like the CLI provides it in a better recourse because I can just scroll through it,
but a lot of people like the web based a little bit more.
And again, it provides us the same exact information, just in a different format.
So here we go.
That's who is.
I hope this was helpful.
Until next time we will see you around.