[INPUT REQUESTED] How do non-commercial Internet users use WHOIS?

[Seun Ojedeji]

Very good use case which resonates with reasons I have used WHOIS in the
past. I think it may be a useful exercise to also look at what field/data
in WHOIS contributes(d) to helping a typical user in their quest. It seem
some quest almost become impossible to achieve with proxy turned on.

Cheers!

Sent from my mobile
Kindly excuse brevity and typos

On Jul 6, 2017 2:47 AM, "Sam Lanfranco" <lanfran at yorku.ca> wrote:

> If I am not flogging a dead horse here I will share my latest use of WHOIS.
>
> I am on the executive of an African organization dedicated to the
> advancement of science in Africa. (I think I bring "diversity" :-) ).
> Approached by a U.S. family foundation with an offer of support, follow up
> was handed to me (as resident elder geek). WHOIS revealed that the domain
> name was 6 weeks old. From Google and WHOIS the Kenyan group to whom we
> were supposed to "funnel" partial funding knew nothing. It was a variant of
> the classic "accounts receivable" scam. WHOIS listed their address as in
> Brooklyn. When I offered to meet them in Brooklyn there email account and
> website vanished. I suspect that they guessed that (thanks to Google maps)
> I knew that their headquarters where a vacant lot in Brooklyn.
>
> Could I have done most of that without WHOIS? Probably, with more time and
> effort, but the domain name WHOIS information was a key ingredient in my
> "trust and verify" inquiry process,. I favor transparency unless there is
> an overwhelming reason for the information to not be there. (Of course, I
> would have had more difficult if they had exercised a privacy proxy option).
>
> Sam Lanfranco
>
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