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Geektools whois gateway has shut down after a 25-year run

geektools.com

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Re: Geektools whois gateway has shut down after a 25-year run

#21

Post by talideon »

Aachen wrote: post #17
sen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s exactly why I’ve used an “admin@“ address for decades now on email registrations. It has a filter that will then redirect anything from the registrar’s domain and junk anything else.

That's fun and I like the idea, until the ICANN decides you need to verify your domain or it'll be terminated within two weeks. Who knows what email sending service or domain they'll decide to use. (OVH, for instance, sent me this not only from a different domain, but from a different country TLD altogether than previous emails from them.) Do you also have a dedicated phone number for your registrar to call? And home…

> until the ICANN decides you need to verify your domain

ICANN don't do that. Your _registrar_ is required by ICANN policies (search for "Whois Data Reminder Policy") to send you notifications to ensure your contact information is current. Whether your domain gets terminated or not is largely down to your registrar, but if your contact details aren't accurate, you probably aren't getting billing notifications either.

Re: Geektools whois gateway has shut down after a 25-year run

#22

Post by b112 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #10
superkuh wrote: post #2

Also, GDPR has put potential legal liability pressure on registrars and most have dropped having any useful WHOIS information.

WHOIS is still useful for telling you registrar, registration date, and nameservers. That's mostly what I ever used it for.

You need to dig the root nameservers these days, if you really want accurate glue record lookups. Don't trust whois.

Re: Geektools whois gateway has shut down after a 25-year run

#23

Post by iorrus »

I used to use this when I was just starting out on the web and the internet was still new. I used it quite frequently over the years initially but not for a long time.

I feel a bit sad, it represented the hacker culture of the early web which unfortunately is long gone. A different time.

Re: Geektools whois gateway has shut down after a 25-year run

#24

Post by Aachen »

talideon wrote: post #21
Aachen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fun and I like the idea, until the ICANN decides you need to verify your domain or it'll be terminated within two weeks. Who knows what email sending service or domain they'll decide to use. (OVH, for instance, sent me this not only from a different domain, but from a different country TLD altogether than previous emails from them.) Do you also have a dedicated phone number for your registrar to call? And home…

> until the ICANN decides you need to verify your domain ICANN don't do that. Your _registrar_ is required by ICANN policies (search for "Whois Data Reminder Policy") to send you notifications to ensure your contact information is current. Whether your domain gets terminated or not is largely down to your registrar, but if your contact details aren't accurate, you probably aren't getting billing notifications either.

Um, I can sign up as John Doe being the domain owner but it's not required that Ms. John also pays the bills upon renewals. Never had a problem with domains under anonymised names.

And it is ICANN policy, it's not the registrar doing this for fun and profit. Per their new-ish policy, it is that my registrar indeed sent that email from a random domain they had laying around.

Re: Geektools whois gateway has shut down after a 25-year run

#26

Post by wlesieutre »

steve_taylor wrote: post #15
wlesieutre wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget your physical mailbox too

I've received a few official-looking fake renewal notices over the years.

I've been using whois privacy for years mostly because of this, but IIRC the bulk of my spam was from Comcast Business. Because anyone who registers a personal website must need a business internet connection.

Re: Geektools whois gateway has shut down after a 25-year run

#27

Post by wongarsu »

lazide wrote: post #7
technion wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public who's details have become absurd. Register any domain and choose not to use domain privacy. Your inbox will fill up over the next hour with people wanting to sell you seo services or a new WordPress installation. I don't mean five or five or six spam emails, I mean you could see over a hundred umin the first hour . Such mailboxes are sure to become unusable .

If you register in a tld which doesn’t allow privacy (.net or .us? Forget which) everything leaks. Kiss goodbye to your phone number. I accidentally did this and got 50 calls within the first 8 hrs. It was insane.

It's interesting to see the evolution of the .de whois. Germany is one of these countries that unsurprisingly doesn't allow domain privacy for various legal reasons, but this clashes with the equally strong privacy desire. Back in (not so) ancient times you just got all info with a normal whois, then the whois started giving you less info and told you to go to the registrar's website (denic.de) where you had to fill out a captcha. With GDPR came some checkboxes to verify you have legitimate reasons to get this info. Now even that is gone, you have to either send them an email or fill out a pdf, sign it and email it to them.

Re: Geektools whois gateway has shut down after a 25-year run

#29

Post by CydeWeys »

b112 wrote: post #22
CydeWeys wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WHOIS is still useful for telling you registrar, registration date, and nameservers. That's mostly what I ever used it for.

You need to dig the root nameservers these days, if you really want accurate glue record lookups. Don't trust whois.

Two different systems operating at different layers, though. I WHOIS the domain when I want to know which nameservers the registry thinks the domain should have. You can then dig in DNS to see what those nameservers are responding, but that's a separate level.

(Note: I work in this field.)

Re: Geektools whois gateway has shut down after a 25-year run

#30

Post by CydeWeys »

pabs3 wrote: post #13
CydeWeys wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth pointing out that WHOIS is sunsetting in January 2025 and that RDAP (already live) is the replacement.

Is this what you mean by WHOIS sunsetting? Do you have any more/other details? https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/icann-board-approves-...

Yes, that's it exactly, particularly this part:

> The global amendments specify operational requirements for providing Registration Data Directory Services (RDDS) via RDAP and detail the sunset of certain obligations for registries and registrars to provide RDDS via the WHOIS protocol by 28 January 2025.

Note that, because registries will be contractually mandated to support RDAP, and that if they choose to continue supporting WHOIS they will be subject to additional uptime/monitoring requirements on WHOIS that they wouldn't be if they simply dropped WHOIS, most are planning on dropping WHOIS as soon as possible.

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