WHOIS is the public record system for domain registrations. Until 2018 it exposed the registrant's name, address, phone, and email. GDPR forced registrars to redact most of that. WHOIS privacy services (paid add-ons) take it further. Knowing exactly what stays visible matters when you're evaluating a domain's trust signals.
What WHOIS always shows
- Registrar name (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare Registrar, etc.)
- Creation, expiry, and last-update dates
- Domain status flags (clientHold, clientTransferProhibited, etc.)
- Authoritative nameservers
What WHOIS privacy hides
- Registrant name — replaced with the registrar's privacy proxy
- Email — replaced with a per-domain forwarding address
- Phone, address — replaced or omitted entirely
Our WHOIS Lookup tool returns whatever the TLD's WHOIS server is currently willing to share.
For domain investigators
Trust signals from a domain's WHOIS: age matters most (use our Domain Age tool), registrar reputation matters second, and matching contact info matters less than it used to since privacy is now standard.