Hi!
I have noticed that when i run whois <domain> on some domains it returns a lot of information such as registrar name, abuse contact, creation date… but for other domains whois returns a paltry amount of information such as “Malformed request.” or just repeats the domain name and has “status: UNASSIGNABLE”.
HERE IS THE QUESTION: i want to buy a domain for the sole purpose of having a single A record that points to a corresponding PTR record on the VPS provider. however, i prefer to have the whois record be as minimal as the 2 examples i gave above. how are those whois entries so sparse? (the 2 domains in question are .it and a .fail top level domains.)
I am doing all this with the goal of hosting a tor node. any help is greatly appreciated! have a lovely day!
mschae@discuss.mschae23.de 1 hour ago
The information returned by whois depends on the registry. For example, most registries for European TLDs basically just show whether the domain is registered (I say “most” because I’m not sure whether it’s actually all or if there are exceptions, but I know .de is like this). In that case, there aren’t even “whois privacy” services available from registrars. For TLDs from other countries or gTLDs, this might vary.
In either case, do note what the other comment says. Whois is not the only way to identify who runs a service.
If you didn’t pay for whois privacy, it would most likely return your actual name, email address, phone number, and home address instead. “Whois privacy” just means your registrar inserts their information into these fields instead, and forwards any mail they might get to you.