Whois

Definition

A utility that returns information about the owners of second-level domains.

Information

The information often includes the name and address of the registrant, administrative contact, technical contact, billing contact, creation date, expiration date, and domain host.

WHOIS is a type of challenge and response protocol that refers to querying databases that store data such as IP addresses and domain names. The WHOIS database created by the Internet Society is presented in a human-readable format. This is an extremely useful tool that allows people to contact domain owners. WHOIS took a somewhat negative turn a few years ago with the introduction of the GDPR. Essentially, since the WHOIS protocol publishes the names and addresses of those who have a particular internet domain, it directly violates the GDPR because it did not obtain express consent from those individuals before exchanging data. †