Do you know who owns your company's domain name? Is it you?
Most of us would presume our domain name belonged to either our company or to ourselves, depending on how and when it was bought. That's not necessarily true. It is possible that the website developer or IT company who helped to set up your system may have registered your domain name to themselves and you are now obliged to pay them for the privilege of using it.
Not fair - but not illegal!
Luckily there is a quick and free way to find out. Go to the Whois website (http://www.whois.domaintools.com), type in your domain name and all will be revealed.
(No need to worry if you asked Digital Paint to set up your domain name; a quick check will show that it has been registered in the name you requested and that you
hold full title.)
Of course, checking your own registration is not the only reason for visiting the Whois website. It's a great way to track down those annoying people who refuse to put full address details on their site, maybe only advertise a 0900 number (which we all know are horrifically expensive to call) or possibly refuse to take your name off their mailing list and don't offer any in-going email addresses. The Whois database should be able to give you the details you need to solve those little problems!
Domain names are sold by literally thousands of different companies but they are registered by a relatively small number of organisations throughout the world. Those ending in .uk are managed by Nominet UK. Other companies such as ARIN and Network Solutions handle .com and .net registrations.
The Whois site draws its information from the database compiled by these companies which uses the details supplied when the domain name was purchased. If your details have changed since that time it is worth contacting the company managing your registration to get the corrections made. Check out the ‘Whois record' tab (http://whois.domaintools.com) for their contact details.
Posted Date: 21st Jul 2011